UFO Sightings Daily, a website dedicated to search for extraterrestrial life on Earth and the paranormal, claimed on Sunday that the NASA's Curiosity Rover posted on Thursday images from Mars, including an alleged living creature that looks like a scorpion.
Scott Waring, the website's editor, wrote that life on the Red Planet may appear strange to Earthlings. He attributes that outlook to government's pronouncements that there is no life in other planets. "We have been programmed to think they are correct. Don't challenge authority, not when so many trust it," Waring states.
He posted a photo that appears to have a living creature with a black exoskeleton. Waring says it has the appearance of a beetle or scorpion. It sits on a rock and has one of its arms upraised and with three claws. The creature is not moving, probably conserving its energy when the rover was in the vicinity.
Waring adds that he also located a roof of a small structure on another photo. "This structure would match the size of the tiny women figures we have been finding. Three come to mind. The roof has corner supports and bars going down where walls would have once been," he continues.
However, neuroscientists explain why people see objects on Mars as looking like familiar objects to the phenomenon called pareidolia. That happens because the human mind tries to turn unknown images into something familiar, traced to the brain's lazy sensory-motor cortex, reports Gizmondo.
Joel Voss, a neuroscientist, published a scientific paper on pareidolia in the Oxford Journal. He says the brain is not very skeptical when processing what it sees. Rather, "it goes for the path of least resistance when presented with visual cues, and actively tries to recognize familiar shapes," quotes Vice.com.