Google spurs ‘horse boy’ mystery

Google Street View's fleet of GPS- and camera-equipped cars have captured plenty of oddities, from flaming vans to attempted muggings, even a cult musician taking a bath. But until now it had never caught a glimpse of the horse boy.

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Spotted here on Google Street View — but made popular by a BBC Scotland news story — is what appears to be a man in a purple shirt, black pants and a brown horse-head mask, standing on a street corner in Aberdeen, Scotland.

But why? The world may never discover the real reason — or find out the horse boy's true identity. But if the motivation was anonymous fame, the plan is succeeding. According to BBC Scotland, the story has been read hundreds of thousands of times, and dozens of people are now sending photos of other "sightings" of the horse boy in diverse situations, "on holiday in Marbella, at a German festival and ... shopping in a supermarket."

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Not all BBC Scotland readers are thrilled by the inverse centaur's sudden popularity, though. "Horse boy isn't a person, it's a cheap mask," an irked Gareth Remblance told the website.

As far as we can tell, the phenomenon is still comfortably contained on the other side of the Atlantic, but Google only knows when a horse boy may turn up in the United States.