Mysterious capybara mural sparks buzz

A Banksy-looking capybara suddenly appeared on the wall of The A Bar in Old Portsmouth on April 10, and the twist is that the artist was not Banksy at all but a street artist named Pidg, according to local reports. (uk.news.yahoo.com) This was not the first Samba mural either. A week earlier, another Banksy-style capybara turned up on the London Road Brew House in Southampton, which is why people in Hampshire started treating the new one like a sequel instead of a random bit of graffiti. (dailyecho.co.uk) The animal in both murals is Samba, a nine-month-old female capybara who escaped from Marwell Zoo near Winchester on March 17, 2026, one day after arriving from Jimmy’s Farm and Wildlife Park in Ipswich with another young capybara named Tango. (marwell.org.uk) Tango was recovered quickly, but Samba stayed loose for weeks, which turned one missing zoo animal into a running local saga. Marwell Zoo said she got out from a temporary holding area and asked people in Owslebury and nearby villages to watch for her. (marwell.org.uk) The search got much bigger than a few keepers walking around with flashlights. Reports said Marwell used drones, thermal imaging, specialist dog teams, and a 24-hour hotline as sightings came in from riversides, gardens, and fields. (yahoo.com) That is why a wall painting in Portsmouth landed so fast with people who had never visited Marwell Zoo. By April, Samba had already become the kind of runaway animal people follow the way they follow a neighborhood mystery, with every sighting and joke pulling in more attention. (nationaltoday.com) The Banksy comparison added another layer because Banksy usually confirms real works through his official channels, and his website says he is not on Twitter or represented by galleries. No such confirmation appeared with the Portsmouth capybara. (banksy.co.uk) So the mural’s real job was not proving a Banksy sighting. It turned Samba from a zoo escape near Winchester into a traveling folk character, moving from Southampton to Portsmouth in spray paint while the real animal was still somewhere out in Hampshire. (uk.news.yahoo.com)