Otto’s Challenge: Seeing Beyond

Otto of the ‘In Flow’ blog, has challenged us to show photos of something which surprises the viewer and makes him see beyond the obvious. In the past, I have posted images of rocks, trees and clouds, where I’ve seen faces and animals in these objects. The condition called ‘Pareidolia’ is a natural function of the human brain which I think many of us ‘suffer’ from, enabling us to see familiar things in the strangest of places. It has been defined as “A false perception of imagery due to what is theorized as the human mind’s over-sensitivity to perceiving patterns in otherwise random phenomena.”

What do you see in this perfectly ordinary tree trunk which jumped out at me in the rain forest in Costa Rica?

I was fascinated by the facial hair and the fancy hat. 🙂