Mysterious, Giant Cat Appears on Auckland Google Map: Facts

Story:

Mysterious, Giant Cat appears on Auckland Google Map.

Other Versions

1. A Giant Cat just appeared on Google Maps, and no one knows how it got there.

2. Giant Cat appears on Google Maps – but Google don’t know how it got there.

Analysis:

In late October 2014, the story of this mysterious, giant Cat appearing on Auckland Google Map baffled everyone including Google itself. Let us find out the facts of this mystery.

Picture about Mysterious, Giant Cat Appears on Auckland Google Map — Mysterious, Giant Cat Appears on Auckland Google Map

What appeared like a giant, grinning Cat on Auckland Google Maps was first seen by someone who sent the screenshot to the website Stuff (stuff.co.nz). As can be seen in the picture, the giant cat appears between the two sides of the Hobson Bay Walkway, with its tail stretching off one side and the face grinning over the other. Talking about the find, Annie Baxter, the Google’s head of communications in New Zealand told Stuff.co.nz:

“We were aware that cats were trying to take over YouTube, but we didn’t realise it was extending to Google Maps. We’re looking into this.”

Cat Doesn’t Exist

The area the giant cat appears on Google Map is actually mangrove swamp on Hobson Bay in Auckland, New Zealand. Needless to say no real cat lies there, and no such geography exists either. Looks like the Cat on Google Maps is made of a series of tracks next to the coastline; and as a reddit user ‘poik12‘ pointed, the cat is “user added”. He says the cat on Google Maps was drawn by his friend who has a weird fascination with cats and calls them geese. The user also shared a screenshot that appears to show his friend boasting about his work on Facebook.

How Was It Possible

As mentioned by Mirror.co.uk, it is possible to edit parts of maps on Google. One cannot change the location of a motorway or famous land mark, but can add small pathways and cycle tracks. The changes have to be user reviewed before they become part of Google Maps officially. When you choose to amend a place on map that fellow users are incredibly unlikely to check, you can validate those changes by getting positive reviews of the changes from your friends and other netizens. The giant cat was nonetheless removed by Google from the Google Map.