Google’s Street View service has long been known to have captured a lot more than just streets, as the recent ‘horse boy’ craze attests.

But now an apparent dead body can be added to the mix after residents of one Worcester street spotted what looked like a dead girl sprawled across the gutter of a quiet residential street.

Rather than the latest victim of a hit and run incident however the little girl in question subsequently turned up alive and well, explaining to relieved locals: “I fell over while I was playing with my friend and thought it would be funny to play dead.”

As the latest in a line of mistaken assumptions to afflict the service it perhaps reflects the limitations of the medium, which acts as a simple “snapshot” of an area at any one time.

This absence of a proper timeline makes Street View sleuthing a fraught affair for as Worcester residents have now found out the camera can indeed lie.