A small creature discovered on Sydney’s streets has baffled biologists, academics, and social media users alike. According to Ladbible, Harry Hayes was jogging on Monday morning when he came across the creature.

Harry Hayes was jogging on Monday morning when he stumbled upon the creature

The city has been drenched in recent days, but the strange-looking animal was not discovered in a flood zone. Instead, Mr Hayes discovered it while jogging through Sydney’s Marrickville suburb.

“My gut says it’s some kind of embryo but with Covid, World War III, and the floods [going on right now] this could very well be an alien,” he said.

The creature in question is about four centimetres in size, Mr Hayes said.

Mr Hayes posted a video of the creature on Instagram, and it quickly spread to other social media platforms such as Twitter. He pokes the creature with a stick in the video, but it remains motionless.

The man poked the creature with a stick but it still didn’t move even a bit

News of the weird-looking creature — which many on social media described as an ‘alien’ — began to go viral after Lil Ahenkan, a popular Australian influencer, shared its pic on Instagram. “What is this?”she captioned the pic.

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“Shark embryo maybe? Or some other sea creature,” one person speculated. “That’s an alien,” said another.

Even biologists were perplexed by the odd-looking discovery. Ellie Elissa, a biologist, re-posted the image on Instagram, asking for help in identifying the creature. “What in the what IS this thing? I thought possum/glider embryo but I have no context or scale and none of my peers can agree,” she wrote.

As possible answers, a cuttlefish embryo, a germinating seed, and a mutated tadpole were all ruled out. When Ladbible contacted the University of Sydney and the University of New South Wales to identify the creature, neither university was able to do so.