The Arizona Department of Transportation announced spotting a suspicious pack of what appeared to be a group of large "mysterious" animals, sparking an immediate viral frenzy among thousands of Twitter users.
"We might have spotted a family of sasquatches on SR 260 near Heber this afternoon. What do you think?" the Department of Transportation posted on Jan. 1 on their official Facebook page, along with surveillance footage from a highway patrol camera and an image showing six blurry dark figures in a line along the snowy roadside.
Obviously, conspiracy theorists latched on and began a viral debate about possibly having spotted a family of Bigfoot, with more than 2,000 people ranging from true believers to those concerned with the well-being and supposed mythological powers of the rarely spotted beings commenting on the surveillance footage, Pix 11 reported.
However, after analyzing the footage, some claimed it to be nothing more than a row of trees. A Bigfoot and UFO enthusiast also made a YouTube video debunking the claim.
After some users raged on Twitter at the officials' idiocy, the department admitted it had just been meant to be humorous.
"We always try to have a little fun with our Facebook and Twitter feeds," department spokesman Tim Tait told ABC News.
"That way, we don't just post news about crashes and road conditions, but a little something to engage our audience in different ways," he continued. "This posting was one of those efforts - something that caught our attention, and we thought it might make some people chuckle."
Meanwhile, Arizona is known to have the highest number of UFO sightings per capita.
In 1951, American Eric Shipton claimed to have spotted the footprint of a beast, which he termed as a yeti, UK MailOnline reported. His discovery prompted a spate of other "sightings" and the expenditure of thousands of dollars by the Sasquatch Genome Project, an organization in America, to investigate and research any other potential sightings.
Between 1921 and 2013, 3,313 sightings have been recorded on the western coast of the U.S., according to a map produced in 2013 by a PhD research.
So, what do you think? Could the suspicious creatures in the surveillance footage belong to the Bigfoot family? Is the Arizona Department of Transportation attempting to cover up a potential sighting, or is it truly just a hoax?
