Source/credit: bill-o-more

What we call chaos is just patterns we haven’t recognized.

~ Chuck Palahniuk

Pareidolia is when you try to find meaning and patterns in random images. Our brains are constantly trying to make sense of the world around us and recognizing patterns and faces are both very important parts of learning.

Some patterns or shapes in the world are very random, like clouds, rocks and a night sky. Our brains, however, will still try to find shapes and patterns that we know already. This is how we end up seeing animals in the clouds and faces in inanimate objects. This is proabably also how people see ghosts, mythological creatures and aliens as well.

Seeing things with Faces

Source/credit: Strangepantheon

One of the first things we learn to recognize as babies are faces, and the identities and emotions that faces can tell you. It is very important for survival to be able to tell a family member apart from a stranger and to read what mood people are in.

We are so focused on reading people’s faces, that we even see them in places where they don’t exist. And then we try to read emotions from these non-existent faces. A car’s headlights and grille may look aggressive, while the windows of a house could be perceived as eyes showing surprise.

There are entire Facebook Groups and SubReddits dedicated to things with faces on it.

Legends and the paranormal

Our brains interpreting faces and shapes where there are none, can be the cause of confusion an delusion. We can see a man on the moon, mermaids, sasquatches, ghosts and aliens in random patterns. Here is a photo of a man relaxing on the surface of Mars to prove the point.

Image source: NASA

Optical illusions with Pareidolia

Here are images from our collection of accidental cases of pareidolia. Do you see these images the same as others?

Click on the images to see the larger version and read the explanation of the optical illusion and the source/credit of the image.