Why does that bag look like a face?

Pareidolia: the cognitive bias of finding meaning in randomness

Many people equate "random" with "well-spaced," creating a cognitive bias that influences how people interpret events. This article explains how people tend to assume a generative force behind the patterns produced by randomness. This phenomenon, known as pareidolia, is seen in claims ranging from backward messages hidden in reversed audio recordings to tea leaf readings.

Why patterns in art are so pleasing

Repeated visual cues like shapes or lines derive from the brain's innate compulsion to identify faces, places, bodies, and more. With repeated shapes, the brain seeks out resolution to the subtle variations between them. See examples in art and music.

Behind the fascinating disguising mechanism of camouflage

Camouflage—nature's master game of hide-and-seek—is more complex than simply how things look. The disguising process required millions of years of evolution that have programmed how our brains take shortcuts. Watch this video to see examples of camouflage and understand how we process it.

Understanding 'YouTube Face,' the platform's pervasive thumbnail style

It's an image that's rampant across the web's premier video platform: open mouths, astonished eyes. It looks cheesy and cheap, yet its practitioners are some of YouTube's most popular personalities. The Ringer's Nate Rogers digs into the history of the phenomenon to learn why it's had such staying power.

What is 'Spielberg Face'?

Spielberg’s career is filled with a consistent technique: zooming in on a significant character’s face as they process some essential element of the story. One of the most famous is from “Jaws,” when Brody first witnesses the shark.

Super recognizers may use specific facial features to commit faces to memory

Researchers believe that recognizing individuals seen only in passing, even decades later, is an ability of genetic origin and specific to facial recognition, rather than a result of better overall memory or perception. Applying eye tracking data from super recognizers to AI has led to improvements in facial recognition software.

Fear or disgust related to clusters of holes and cracks, called trypophobia, may stem from evolutionary processes to help us avoid pathogens.

Fear or disgust related to clusters of holes and cracks, called trypophobia, may stem from evolutionary processes to help us avoid pathogens

This type of extreme reaction to harmless holes, dots, cracks, and seed collections can be debilitating for those who have it, but it is not an officially recognized disorder in the DSM-5.

The art of 'undiscovering' phantom islands

Centuries of maps include islands and isles that appear to only exist on atlases. This article explores the discovery and "undiscovery" of such landscapes, which still persist despite modern technology. As recently as 2012, Google Maps showed an...

A history of belly buttons, from dinosaurs to modern dogs

Could dinosaurs have had belly buttons, just like you and me? Some researchers believe they've found evidence the ancient reptiles had the cute scar, a common feature among placental mammals (but which is also found in many more kinds of animals). Dive into their peculiar findings with this fascinating video.

Find 36 hidden messages in these household name company logos

Brand logos are designed to represent a business's core values and products in a unique, differentiating way. We experience this branding mechanism regularly, and hundreds of businesses are recognizable to us via only this one symbol, even when...

The adorable happiness of animals, in photos

Can animals experience happiness? And even if they do, do their bodies manifest happiness in similar ways to humans? Regardless, you surely will derive some happiness after viewing these thirty photos of a variety of animals appearing to smile big, beautiful smiles.

Machu Picchu, sacred backdrop for your dating app pic

Anyone who’s been on Tinder or Hinge in the last decade has noticed it: the obligatory Machu Picchu selfie, almost as ubiquitous as those photos of men posing with a fresh-caught fish. How did Machu Picchu, of all places, become a dating-app cliche? This satirical essay from McSweeney’s doesn’t answer that question, but has a great time poking fun at it.

Psychoactive drugs found in 1,000-year-old bag made of fox noses

Archaeologists in Bolivia have uncovered an ancient bag filled with "amazing goodies" that suggests the owner or owners were well-versed in the properties of psychoactive substances and sourced goods from well-established trade routes. This article details the findings, which shed light on how ancient peoples in the region consumed and obtained psychoactive substances.

Why some people say the moon is made of cheese

Mental Floss digs into the history behind the fable, which dates back as far as the 1500s, when it was mentioned in "The Proverbs of John Heywood." Even NASA has gotten in on the joke, tweeting a (supposedly) doctored photograph showing the moon's expiration date.

Can you guess which ancient human skull is which?

When scientists discover a new fossil skull, they compare it to skulls that have already been identified as particular early human species. In this activity, you get the chance to be the scientist! Choose a mystery skull to identify by clicking on it.

The world's weirdest flowers

We mostly marvel at the beauty of flowers, but some kinds of flowers are incredibly weird. This video highlights 15 of the world's strangest flowers, from the massive Titan Arum to the rare Lady Slipper Orchid.

Each design detail on the US $1 bill has significance

The eye in the triangle floating above the pyramid, for instance, is “the Eye of Providence watching over and ensuring the endurance of the structure of the American government.” This article details every design choice’s significance on the dollar—and a few conspiracies around these choices as well.

What is déjà vu?

Déjà vu describes the strange experience of a situation feeling much more familiar than it should. Here's an explanation of theories about why it happens.

View the rainbow effect on the waters at First Landing State Park

The phenomenon results from light interacting with a thin film of natural oils on the surface of swamps and marshes at the site, not unlike the coloration seen in soap bubbles. The oils originate from decaying vegetation or from anaerobic bacteria reducing iron in soil. (Some readers may experience a paywall.)

The Japanese folklore that inspired Pokémon

Characters from the popular video game series appear to reference the yōkai from Japanese folklore, which first became popular during the country's Edo period, when art and literature became mass-produced.

Wafaa Bilal had a camera surgically implanted in the back of his head

The artist programmed the camera to capture one image per minute of his daily life. He explained that the project was meant to document his past—in a rather literal way—as it slipped away from him, in a mode that gestured at both surveillance and the radically objective nature of photos. Viewers can expect an immersive installation featuring thousands of mundane images transmitted to a website, challenging traditional photography and exploring the intersection of public and private information.

The theory behind Dalí's 'Un Chien Andalou'

The 16-minute "Un Chien Andalou," or "an Andalusian dog," was shocking for 1929, when it was released and remains unsettling today. This brief video essay explores how the film sought to disrupt standard conceptions of art and meaning, making it an essential example of surrealism.

Pepsi uses augmented reality to prank people at a bus shelter

Commuters at a London bus stop have seen alien invasions, monsters from the sewers grabbing pedestrians and tigers running down the street as part of an elaborate advertising campaign.

The okapi was once considered a cryptid, or an animal with an unverified existence

Similar to dragons or Bigfoot, the okapi was once believed to be a mythical animal, known colloquially as an "African unicorn." Its confusing features include zebra-like legs on a donkey-esque body with a giraffe-like head. However, this animal is both real and quite cute.

Metal fragments can create glowing rings when sand chips them off helicopter blades

The Kopp-Etchells effect—named after two soldiers who died in action in Afghanistan—may occur when kicked-up material shaves off fragments from a helicopter blade's abrasion strip. Due to a property called pyrophoricity, the fragments react with air and ignite, producing halos.

Crows are believed to have intelligence on par with a seven-year-old child and demonstrate complex behaviors, from problem-solving with tools to recognizing human faces.

When you complete a CAPTCHA on a website to prove you are human, you may be unknowingly training algorithms for self-driving cars, whose systems require training data to help identify crosswalks, bicycles, and other outdoor objects.

Some Pokémon have been named after real and fictional organisms, while some real-world species have been named after Pokémon, such as Chilicola charizard and Binburrum zapdos.

After 25 people used virtual reality headsets to practice flying with virtual wings—flapping their arms—their visual cortex responded to the wings almost as if they were real arms, treating them as body parts.

According to the physics of black holes, our 4D reality may be a hologram—a projection of information coded on a 2D surface on the edge of the universe.

Clever Hans was a 1900s horse that was believed to be able to solve math equations, tell time, and read and comprehend German, until a psychology student discovered how he got his answers.

Explore the known asteroids, comets, and spacecraft involved in asteroid studies within our solar system with 'Eyes on Asteroids,' a 3D visualization from NASA.

A 2019 Facebook event called on attendees to "Storm Area 51, They Can't Stop All of Us," resulting in countless memes, the creation of a music festival, and eventually the arrests of those who did try to approach the area.

Learn how your body is, scientifically, like a firework with its own slow, controlled burn.

The Mona Lisa's celebrity status and repeated restorations have obscured what made the painting so revolutionary for its time

The concept of phantom limbs, the perception that amputated limbs are still present, dates back to a French military surgeon in the 16th century.

All rainbows are 'raincircles' caused by water droplets separating white sunlight into a spectrum of colors, but Earth's surface blocks the bottom half of the circle from our line of sight.

Browse a detailed visual analysis of over 200,000 similes—comparisons that often use 'like' or 'as'—from popular fiction to see how frequently writers the same idiomatic expressions.

Explore fun facts from the USPS, including unique post office buildings, a stamp that traveled past Pluto, and more.

Ebola is a filovirus, meaning it resembles a thread under a microscope, though it sometimes twists and can resemble a bowl of spaghetti.

Explore an interactive map built from more than 100,000 survey responses on where people find joy in their lives

An investigation suggests a Scottish island became awash in forever chemicals via seafoam and seaspray—raising questions about what that means for the safety of other coastal areas.

Power lines are dotted with large, brightly colored balls to improve the visibility of these thin wires to helicopters and small planes and help prevent potential crashes.

In 2009, the nation was gripped by the story of a missing young boy who was believed to be floating over Colorado in a homemade balloon, until it was revealed that he was at home the whole time.

Memecoins are a type of cryptocurrency—a form of digital currency with a wide variety of uses—created around popular 'memes,' or viral internet jokes.

Watch this video that uses Lego bricks to explain how venture capital works.

In 1945, Surrealist artist Salvador Dalí and legendary animator Walt Disney began collaborating on a short film that was not completed until 2003, years after both men had died.

Take a 3D tour of the Hajj, Islam's annual pilgrimage to Mecca, undertaken by over 1.5 million Muslims.

For centuries, Niagara Falls has been a magnet for daredevils seeking to conquer one of nature's most powerful wonders, with its 200-foot drop and water rushing at 32 feet per second with 280 tons of force.