Google Maps users stunned to spot four real-life Teletubbies walking down Russian street

The wonder of Google Maps is that you can virtually “visit” almost any spot on the globe without stepping away from your computer.

People have found all sorts of things on their virtual travels, from flying rabbits to alien spacecraft, even “ghosts”.

And while people in odd costumes are nothing new for seasoned Google maps viewers – there’s a Batman and some creepy Saw puppets out there if you look – one virtual tourist has found one of the strangest sights yet.

Four people wandering the streets of Norilsk, a city in Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia dressed in colour-coded boiler suits that look a lot like Telllytubby costumes. Panning around the image reveals that the spooky quartet are all wearing matching face masks too.

Whoever the mysterious foursome might be, they are definitely Google Maps experts, cropping up in dozens of images of the region. Perhaps there’s not much else to do in remote Russian cities north of the Arctic Circle.

Some have speculated that the group might be connected with the Google camera car – one Reddit commenter said: “Looks like the Google Maps street crew, since it’s cold they are wearing the boiler suits”.

Certainly the colourful suits do tie in with Google’s multicoloured branding.

Or equally, they might be local pranksters. “This looks like one hell of a drunken walk,” wrote another commenter.

No matter where you go in the world, when people spot the Google camera car trundling though their neighbourhood, many of them will find a way to do something special to immortalise themselves online.

Some people dress as pigeons, others dress as bears. Some, even – apparently – go to the bother of staging a massive police operation.

A few, disappointingly, stoop to vulgarity when the see the Google camera car. More than a few in fact.

Loads of people.

But the eerie Google Tellytubbies of Norilsk might just be the strangest sight yet.