Monday, September 17, 2012

Pareidolia!

Last week I talked a great deal about audio pareidolia and audio illusions generally. This week I want to spend some time on the visual. As a reminder, Pareidolia is a phenomenon in which vague or random stimuli are perceived as significant or meaningful.

For some reason I have been running across many examples of visual pareidolia, so I thought I would share them on the blog. This first image is a nice example of pareidolia on a tree:


I assume everyone can see the owl face in the tree.
This next example of pareidolia comes from an overhead image of some flamingos, ironically in the shape of a flamingo:


This last image is one of the most common types of pareidolia, an image in the clouds:


So, there are three nice examples of visual pareidolia. I will post more visual illusions in the upcoming days.

3 comments:

  1. EXCELLENT!! I AM EXTREMELY INTERESTED IN THE OWL TREE AND IF I COULD SEE IT .I HAVE STUDIED OWLS FOR YEARS AND THIS OWL PAREIDOLIA IS
    A MUST SEE.THANK YOU. WILLIAM

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  2. If I'm not mistaken, the owl tree is in Stourhead Gardens in England. I took a picture of it from far away when I visited there, because I could see from a distance that it sort of looked like an owl. I never saw it this close up. This photo almost makes it look like someone colored the bark of the tree to enhance the owl face that is already formed by the tree shape. Now I wish I had run over to look at it up close in person when I was there!

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  3. Cara,
    That is really interesting about the tree. I got these pics off the web, so I don't know if they have been manipulated in any way. Glad top know the owl tree really exists though!

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