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Giant, Extra-Terrestrial Mouse Seen Hanging Out On Mars ‘Plain As Day’ In Rover Images

By Shelley Hazen
Published on: 02:52 PST, Nov 30, 2015

A giant mouse was recently spotted chilling on the surface of Mars. The images are intriguing, and there are a couple explanations for the sight: Either the Red Planet has a serious vermin problem or the internet’s collective brain is playing a trick on itself.

The most logical explanation is certainly the latter.

The online hoopla began thanks to an amateur astronomer and alien spotter on YouTube named Joe White. On his channel, ArtAlienTV, he declared that he spotted the space mouse on images beamed to Earth by the Curiosity Rover, Tech Times and the Huffington Post UK reported.

“A possible very large mouse or other rodent on Mars in Gale Crater sitting on a ridge plain as day,” White declared. “It is probably an optical illusion but seems to have big ears, nose and eyes visible. It resembles a very large mouse or jerboa in appearance.”

Seeing as NASA hasn’t confirmed that humanity has discovered a race of extra-terrestrial rodents, White’s admission that he had been fooled by an optical illusion is the more likely explanation. Regardless, White still insisted that “other people including myself have found rodents up there before so it could be. Estimated size 2 – 3 feet,” the New York Post added.

The mouse-like shape seen in the grainy, blurred Rover image can easily be interpreted as the familiar vermin. It appears to have a narrow tail, two swooping ears, and a pointed nose. At most, White has spotted a rock that bears an uncanny resemblance to a mouse, but nothing more.

However, humans have “seen” plenty of things on Mars before, the Washington Post pointed out. We’ve “discovered” a woman, statute to a Martian god, floating spoon, a ball, crab, and a jelly doughnut on the surface of Mars.

And studies have revealed that people who believe something ardently aren’t likely to be convinced otherwise, especially if that belief is part of a conspiracy. In this case, the conspiracy would be that NASA is hiding a Martian mouse from Earthlings.

There is a phenomenon at work here — and it’s not the discovery of alien life. Rather, it’s something called pareidolia, a “deeply biological” skill that has resulted from years of evolution and makes people see familiar patterns in the unfamiliar and chaotic, the Post explained this summer.

These days, pareidolia is used to spot a mouse on Mars, but it has a practical application: helping humans recognize things that are important. The phenomenon is a survival mechanism, ensuring that no matter what we’re looking at, we’re able to pick out a predator from the chaos and turn tail before it eats us.

“We’ve evolved brains that think in these quick, dirty ways that are usually right, but at times can lead us to systematically be biased,” scientist Christopher French told the BBC in 2013. “A classic example is the Stone Age guy standing there, scratching his beard, wondering whether that rustling in the bushes really is a saber-toothed tiger. You’re much more likely to survive if you assume it’s a saber-toothed tiger and get the hell out of there — otherwise you may end up as lunch.”

Meanwhile, the Curiosity Rover is undertaking some serious business on Mars — not mouse-hunting. The images in question were captured as the lander explored the Gale Crater and snapped black-and-white photos of a parched landscape and specks of dry clay that could be four billion years old. This clay suggests Mars used to be warmer and wetter than it is today.

Next, the lander will examine a deposit of basalt dunes, which may be volcanic and not native to the crater; examination could reveal some data about the planet’s volcanic past. More interesting, perhaps, than the prospect of a space mouse, this data suggests that the dust particles were blown in by an unknown force.

[Image via Szasz-Fabian Jozsef/Shutterstock]

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