NASA’s robotic missions on Mars occasionally encounter unusual rock formations or features, which aligns with their objective of exploring the Martian surface. These discoveries range from intriguing, such as a donut-shaped rock potentially not originating from Mars, to extraordinary, like the rare striped rock recently identified by the Perseverance rover in the Jezero Crater.
At times, these finds provoke light-hearted fascination, often triggering reactions from conspiracy theorists and individuals unfamiliar with the phenomenon of pareidolia—the human tendency to perceive familiar shapes in random objects.
Over the years, observers have claimed to “see” various objects on Mars, from bones and doorways to avocados, sparking imaginative theories about extraterrestrial life.
A recent example of this fascination is a rock formation that garnered significant attention, winning NASA’s “Image of the Week” for Week 189 (September 22-28, 2024) in a public vote. The rock, vaguely resembling a human head or perhaps a figure like Bigfoot, captivated the public despite lacking the scientific significance of many other Martian discoveries.

The tendency to perceive familiar patterns or shapes in ambiguous stimuli, such as seeing recognizable objects in rock formations, is known as pareidolia. From an evolutionary perspective, this cognitive bias likely developed as a survival mechanism.
The ability to quickly detect potential threats, such as predators, would have been crucial for early humans. In his book The Demon-Haunted World – Science as a Candle in the Dark, Carl Sagan explained that recognizing possible dangers, even in uncertain or unclear situations, was essential for human survival.
For instance, early humans who instinctively reacted to what might have been a lion hiding in the bushes were more likely to survive than those who did not. Even if the perceived threat turned out to be a false alarm, such as mistaking a rock for a predator, those who erred on the side of caution lived to pass on their genes.
This evolutionary advantage helped to ingrain pattern recognition in our brains, even when those patterns are not actually present, resulting in phenomena like pareidolia today.
“Our brain is constantly trying to make sense of the outside world. One way the brain accomplishes this goal is by detecting and learning patterns, which are essentially statistical regularities in the environment, because these patterns help the brain decide how to react or behave in order to survive,” Dr Jess Taubert, from the University of Queensland, previously told IFLScience.
- See also: Striped rock found on Mars
Carl Sagan argued that the ability to recognize patterns, whether they genuinely exist or not, was a crucial evolutionary adaptation for survival. However, this skill can also result in the misinterpretation of random shapes or visual stimuli, such as perceiving images or light patterns as familiar objects, including human faces.
In this context, observers are interpreting the appearance of rocks as resembling a melancholic human face.