By Staff Writer: Jerri Clewis
Imagine popping open a bag of your favorite salty snack and pulling out a treat, only to see something completely unexpected—a face looking back at you. That’s pareidolia, or rather, the phenomenon of seeing faces or other patterns in inanimate objects.
Pareidolia is a type of apophenia, a tendency to perceive connections between unrelated things, and it is what makes us see (sometimes even hear) something significant in things we encounter, according to Live Science.
In some famous cases, many people see a man on the moon, created through craters dotting the surface that give a distinct face-like appearance. Photographs from NASA’s Viking 1 Orbiter even captured a face-like formation on Mars in 1976, leading to conversations about the existence of an ancient civilization on the planet.
Pareidolia can also happen a little closer to home—in our food.
One person was having a snack break when they spotted a Cheeto that looked suspiciously like Harambe, a beloved gorilla from the Cincinnati Zoo. Harambe gained international fame and sparked a social conversation about animal cruelty after an incident involving a child led to the animal’s death at the hands of a zoo worker in 2016.
The Cheeto went viral across social media and various news sites after appearing on eBay before allegedly selling for almost $100,000 in 2017, according to CNBC News.
The Virgin Mary has also popped up in food. In 1994, one woman discovered a grilled cheese with the religious icon’s face and kept it in a plastic bin for 10 years before later placing it up for bid on eBay. It sold in 2004 for a shocking bid of $28,000, placed by the online casino Golden Palace Casino, NBC News reported.
Religious figures are surprisingly common when it comes to pareidolia.
In 1996, employees at the cafe Bongo Java in Tennessee discovered a cinnamon roll that purportedly resembled Mother Teresa, and the treat, nicknamed the Nun Bun, went on to gain worldwide attention after it was placed on display for several years. But the Nun Bun has since become the subject of a mystery after it disappeared in a 2007 Christmas robbery.
A $5000 reward was offered for the Nun Bun’s safe return to no avail, the Tennessean reported in 2016.