Platypus or hippopotamus?: Animal pareidolia
The whimsical shapes of the limestone rock once again stir our imagination in this corner of the Cueva del Puerto . The cracks and surface textures seem to trace the outline of an animal’s profile: is it the flattened bill of a platypus, or the wrinkled snout of a hippopotamus slumbering within the stone? I have learned what pareidolia meaning: a tendency of the brain to perceive patterns, which occurs specifically when recognizable forms, such as faces, animals, or objects, are projected onto ambiguous or random visual or auditory stimuli (for example, seeing a face in the clouds, in a stain on a wall, or on the front of a car)
