It began with the silhouette of a goat perched atop a narrow wall near Kew Bridge in London, with tumbling rocks signifying the animal’s perilous position.

Over the course of the week, more silhouettes began popping up around the capital: two elephants with their trunks reaching towards each other from blocked-out windows on the side of a house in Chelsea; three monkeys swinging across a bridge on Brick Lane; and a wolf howling towards the sky, painted on to the face of a satellite dish on Rye Lane in Peckham.

On Friday, a fifth silhouette, of two pelicans eating fish, appeared on the wall of a Walthamstow fish and chip shop.

The cryptic murals are the work of Banksy. The Bristol-based street artist, whose identity is unknown, confirmed the pieces as genuine on his Instagram but he did not caption any of them – fuelling fierce speculation over their meaning.

Gough, an artist himself who was the subject of Tik Tok rumours that he was Banksy, posited that he could be aiming to release an image a day with a grand reveal sometime around the weekend.

Gough, an artist himself who was the subject of Tik Tok rumours that he was Banksy, posited that he could be aiming to release an image a day with a grand reveal sometime around the weekend.