Large Fierce Mammal

My father used to say that you could make a shit house look like the Taj Mahal if you shot it from the right angle, explaining why some people looked great in pictures but like ass in person. Those were the days before Photoshop.

This was supposed to be two articles, but try as I might, they kept melding so bugger it. Obviously I’m having a two for one sale.

This is not a test, and you are not seeing things because of angle or a trick of the light. Mount Rushmore is NOT a Natural phenomenon. Somebody did it on purpose.

Pareidolia is a phenomenon of cognition in which perception of a stimulus becomes connected with other present or remembered stimuli so that a pattern emerges in the mind of the observer, whether or not any connectedness or pattern actually exists. A famous example appears at the top of this article, and an exceptionally common expression of pareidolia is recognizing a face in the bark of a tree, a rock outcropping, a cloud, or any other non-face wearing thing that comes into view under the right combination of form, illumination, and angle. It is not restricted to humans. Our brilliant Dog Cinders once came out of the house to pee on a Hallowe’en night many years ago,  only to find herself confronted by a lit Jack-o’-lantern. Its fiendish visage was quickly met with one of her own, and only when I stepped up to knock on its head did she relent, sniffing it before returning to the house, tail held high in derision.

Toast appears on Jesus Christ.

While the phenomenon can result in misinterpretation of patterns where none actually exist, leading to fallacious religious epiphanies when Christian icons appear on traditional breakfast fare, facial recognition actually has its foundation in very sound matters of survival that spring from the Way of the Wild.

To quote a piece called Seeing Faces published by the Australian National University’s Research School of Psychology,

Most of us have had the experience of seeing faces in clouds, tree bark and the shadows of spooky places. This is because our brains place a special emphasis on faces compared to most other visual stimuli. From an evolutionary point of view, being able to quickly recognize different faces is a huge advantage. If one rabbit looks the same as another to a caveman it really doesn’t matter because he’s going to chase them both with a big club. But when it comes to people, we have to be much more selective who we chase with clubs and who we invite in to share the rabbit stew.

All this having been said, I will get to the point with some interesting visual examples of the pareidolia phenomenon. Some are faces and some are not. I’ll leave you to decided which is which.

Source: http://grannysu.blogspot.ca/2009/03/faces-in-trees.html

While I wish it wasn’t the case, I’m feeling like this one might have had a little help. Source: http://grannysu.blogspot.ca/2009/03/faces-in-trees.html

Hint – This is not a face. Allegedly located near Carefree, Arizona, one article states, “There is a dirt pull-off on the side of Stagecoach Pass Road with enough room for several vehicles.” The hilarity is in the wording every time. Source: http://thejetpacker.com/nature-porn-20-famous-penis-rocks-vagina-caves-and-breast-mountains/

Source: http://thejetpacker.com/nature-porn-20-famous-penis-rocks-vagina-caves-and-breast-mountains/

Proof that Nova Scotian Deer roost in trees. Mrs. LFM photo. Source: http://randy.whynacht.ca/archives/1008