Of those Mars rocks that looked like bugs

Ohio University Entomologist William S. Rosmoser presented a conference poster at the entomology 2019 conference claiming he has found evidence of bugs and reptiles on Mars, and he is wrong. By zooming in too far on images of Martian rocks, and by tweaking contrast just so, he was able to find sets of rocks that looked reminiscent of insects, snakes, and lizards. None of these rocks were observed to move, because they are rocks, not insects, snakes, or lizards.

There are lots of rocks on Mars, and some of them resemble life on Earth. They are still just rocks. credit: NASA / JPL-CalTech

You can read the original press release and see images in this press release: OHIO entomologist: Photos show evidence of life on Mars (Originally posted on Ohio Univ. News, but retrieved via Internet Archive.)

Mars is a vast rock-strewn wasteland, and it is easy to find rocks that look like anything you want, if you look at enough images. Over the years, folks have rocks that look like Bigfoot, human faces, and so much more. And we’ve done the same thing with rocks on Bennu right here in our CosmoQuest community. And, even on Earth, people regularly find rocks that look like living things. They are still rocks. Our human mind is programmed by evolution to find patterns, and it is better see snakes that don’t exist in patterns in the rocks, then to miss the snake you are about to step on.