A photograph taken from the NASA Mars Curiosity Rover seems to have captured an alien face hugger (like the ones that Ripley famously fought) climbing up a cliff on the Red Planet.

You can see the photograph above and it isn’t really conclusive other than the fact that some people are saying it looks like one of the face huggers and going mental about it. That isn’t exactly any proof. On the flip side of this, people who don’t believe it’s a face hugger are just saying it’s a weird rock formation on the planet, which is perfectly reasonable but again there’s no proof of that either.

Here’s what some guy called Seth Shostak, Senior Astronomer and Director of the Center for SETI Research says about it. I don’t know who he is or how qualified he is to talk about this, but all the other articles on the face hugger are quoting him so I’m just following their lead and hoping he knows what he’s talking about:

Featured Image VIA 

Image VIA

Those that send them to me are generally quite excited, as they claim that these frequently resemble SOMETHING you wouldn’t expect to find on the rusty, dusty surface of the Red Planet.

It’s usually some sort of animal, but occasionally even weirder objects such as automobile parts. Maybe they think there are cars on Mars.

It’s a basic human instinct to see patterns where none exist — a phenomenon known as ‘pareidolia’. It’s kind of like when you can see animals in cloud formations.

Right, got that? It’s not an actual face hugger, it’s just a figment of your imagination. Phew – I thought it kind of looked a bit like the Mona Lisa myself though.

I suppose this phenomenon explains this door handle that was found on Mars a couple of years ago too. I think it might be slightly more concerning than the existence of a face hugger though that our brains are constantly making stuff up about the world in front of us, how is this already not more common knowledge than it is?