10 Mind Melting Illusions (And Exactly How They Work)

7. Pareidolia

What did you see first in the image above? Two old faces, or two mates chillin' out with some tunes?

The thing is that, when you look closely, the painting is unambiguously the latter, but somehow the image of the faces is hard to shake, and this is down to a phenomenon called Pareidolia. This effect causes humans to interpret random images, patches of light and even Martian features as human faces. It leads to all kinds of reported sightings of ghosts and incidences of Jesus turning up on your morning toast.

This is just one example, but there are plenty more like it.

Humans love faces. It's where we talk from, where we see from and where we show emotion, so it's no surprise that the brain has gotten very adept at picking them out, perhaps too adept. Being able to spot a face amongst random noise is also a fairly solid survival strategy, as it would enable you to spot a tiger in the long grass before it gets a chance to eat you. Those who with the predisposition for spotting faces were the ones that survived long enough to sire a few heirs, resulting in a species that, in the absence of tigers, puts its powers of interpretation into spotting messiahs in breakfast items.