Detecting ... elephant head on Mars

The image below makes people think of an elephant on Mars. But this is actually a lava flow that forms the shape of an elephant head.

>>>The mysterious cloud on Mars

The photo was taken by a high-resolution camera from NASA's Mars Exploratory Renaissance Spacecraft shooting the Elysium Planitia area, a flat area on Mars with the youngest lava lines on the surface of the Red Planet.

The lava flow forms a very similar shape to the elephant's head. (Source: Discovery)

Most of Mars does not have geological activity, so active volcanoes and lava flows are all things in the past. But the 'young' lava that covers the Elysium Planitia may have been there for 100 years, or nearly 10 years. This may not sound like it, but compared to the geological history spanning billions of years of Mars, this number is not permeable.

However, according to geologist Alfred McEwen of Arizona University, the flow of elephant-shaped lava is not the focus of this image. This may be a good example of "pareidolia" - a psychological phenomenon that makes our brains easy to imagine familiar images from random shapes.