海角大神

Seeing faces in clouds, the moon, or your morning toast? Don鈥檛 worry, you鈥檙e not the only one.

What you鈥檙e experiencing is called , a psychological phenomenon whereby the brain perceives a pattern or meaning where it doesn鈥檛 exist. Think , the famous man in the moon 鈥� or, in the case of , a plesiosaur in a Scottish loch.

One of the best-known cases of mass pareidolia, the famous Loch Ness Monster photo taken by British surgeon and colonel Robert Wilson in 1934 was long ago revealed as a hoax: Nothing more than, as Vox put it, 鈥�.鈥�

Still, it鈥檚 easy to see how 鈥淭he Surgeon鈥檚 Photo,鈥� as it is known, gave birth to the modern Loch Ness legend. The picture seems to clearly show the head, neck, and partly submerged body of a dinosaur.

Or does it?

Pareidolia comes from the Greek terms 鈥減ara,鈥� meaning alongside or beyond, and 鈥渆idolon,鈥� meaning image or form. It refers to how the mind ascribes significance to a random image or sound.

According to American astronomer and author Carl Sagan, the phenomenon that allowed humans to recognize faces from a distance or in the dark. The instinct was vital to identifying friend or foe, but Mr. Sagan noted that it could cause people to misinterpret patterns.

Pareidolia may occur as early as infancy. , researchers showed 10- and 12-month-old babies an image of four blobs and an outline, both right side up and upside down, while playing a sound. They found that the infants tended to look at the bottom blob 鈥� what the researchers referred to as the 鈥減areidolic mouth area鈥� 鈥� longer when the image was upright, suggesting an early recognition of the source of sound in the human face.

The tendency can also be directed: When taking the聽, once thought to be of great import in clinical psychology, patients relied on pareidolia to describe images to doctors from a series of inkblots on paper.

Expectations also influence what people see when they experience pareidolia, according to Sophie Scott, a professor of neuroscience at the University College London.

鈥淏eing able to see Jesus's face in toast is telling you more about what's happening with your expectations, and how you're interpreting the world based on your expectations, rather than anything that's necessarily in the toast," Dr. Scott .

And once you鈥檝e seen a face in your breakfast 鈥� or a long-necked behemoth in a photo of a lake 鈥� it鈥檚 surprisingly difficult to ignore the image.

鈥淭hat's one of the things about illusions, they have this remarkable tendency to formulate in your mind, and it's very difficult to unthink them," Bruce Hood, author of 鈥淭he Self Illusion: How the Social Brain Creates Identity,鈥� told the British network.

To celebrate the 81st anniversary of 鈥淭he Surgeon鈥檚 Photo,鈥� Google set out on a quest for Nessie, taking boat and camera to take pictures on the Scottish loch.

One image captured something in the distance.

鈥淲e were surprised by this sighting too,鈥� a Google spokesperson , which took note of the photo. 鈥淚s it a log, a bird or... the monster?!鈥�

You decide.