If You Immediately See Faces In These Photos, This Is What It Says About You

No matter where you look, you see eyes staring back at you. They’re not real ones, of course. Perhaps they’re in the curvature of a cloud overhead or the knots in an old tree. Whatever you’re peering at, though, you often find faces in the objects around you. And science has an interesting explanation why.

Take this palm tree as an example. Your eyes might skim the trunk – nothing out of the ordinary about the rough texture there. But at the top of it, a hollow in the center looks a bit like a mouth when you note its situation beneath a pair of knots, which mimic a set of peepers.

Or maybe you’ve headed to the bakery this weekend for a treat – cinnamon bun, anyone? Before you can bite into the sweet confection, though, its curves catch your eye. It almost looks like the face of a person who has fallen fast asleep. They’ve even got their mouth slightly ajar, a position in which we’ve all dozed off, whether or not we want to admit it.

You probably find that the sky is full of faces too. This one’s particularly foreboding: a dark puff of cloud that’s backlit by a setting sun. The orangey rays peeking through the dark-gray gloom illuminate a creepy face. Beneath its shadowy eyes, you can see a slender nose, as well as the pumpkin-colored outline of a mouth.

Not all the faces you’ll see will be human ones, either. Imagine you’ve just reclined back in the dentist’s chair and looked up. That moveable light they use to illuminate your mouth might appear to be smiling back at you too. And the friendly figure looks quite mammalian: we see the distinct features of a water buffalo.