'Alien visitors' theory as Net goes wild for 'skull' lurking off Canadian island
And some are now claiming it might be a sign of alien interference.
UFO tracker Scott Waring told DailyMail.com of the sighting off Cormorant Island: 'I believe ancient alien visitors created the skull. They did this to leave a sign behind for others to see that says, "We were here first." '
When viewed from the north, a sandbank beneath the water reveals a distinct shape of a human skull.
However, scientists contend there is a simple explanation for the confounding illusion.
The strange skull-like formation can be found on Google Maps by searching for the village of Alert Bay, the only settlement on the tiny island, which is located off the northeast coast of Vancouver Island in Canada's British Columbia province.
However, you will need to rotate the map 180 degrees in order to see the 'face' looming out from the waters.
On social media, commenters flocked to share their amazement.
One wrote: 'That's actually incredible. It's amazing!!'
Another chimed in: 'Help me out here, in the words of X-Files, I want to believe.'
While the sight might be a mystery to some, Waring is convinced it must be extraterrestrial in origin.
The founder of UFO Sightings Daily says that the sandbar's human-like appearance is 'not a coincidence.'
He added: 'The details of the skull are completely accurate, but on a scale of 100 meters across.'
But not everyone is on board with these claims of alien activity.
UFO researcher Philip Mantle told DailyMail.com: 'There are no signs that alien life forms have visited Earth in antiquity and left evidence of such.
'It could well be a natural rock formation that looks skull-like. A bit like seeing faces in the clouds.'
In fact, scientists say there is a good reason why all sorts of geological structures get mistaken for faces or skulls.
When faced with a structure containing intricate and varied patterns, the brain turns this noisy, dynamic information into patterns and objects that we can understand.
The brain gets this right most of the time, but sometimes certain predispositions cause errors that disturb our perceptions.
Dr Robin Kramer, an expert on face perception from the University of Lincoln in eastern England, told DailyMail.com: 'Our face detection system has evolved to be great at detecting faces and it makes more sense to err on the side of caution by occasionally seeing faces where there aren't any, rather than missing faces where there are.'
Scientists call this phenomenon pareidolia, which is a bias towards seeing meaningful patterns in inanimate objects.
Dr Kramer says: 'Face pareidolia explains why we might see faces in geological structures, as well as pretty much anything else.'
Scientists think that we evolved this sensitivity towards faces because it helped our ancestors find friends and spot enemies.
For hunter-gatherers, it was better to briefly mistake a bush for your neighbor's animal than miss someone sneaking up on you.
Professor Kevin Brooks, a psychologist at Macquarie University in Australia, told DailyMail.com: 'We tend to classify anything vaguely face-like as a face until proven otherwise – it's safer that way.
'Evolutionary psychologists speculate that we evolved this mechanism to help our survival, and increase our chances of passing on our genes, bringing forth another generation of people who are also good at face detection.'
Some people are more sensitive to faces and so might experience more pareidolia in their daily lives.
Dr Susan Wardle, a researcher at the National Institutes of Health, said pareidolia is not 'usually' a sign of any psychological or neurological issues.
However, a high rate of pareidolia might be a sign of someone's bias towards believing in the paranormal.
A Finnish study conducted in 2012 found that people with religious or paranormal beliefs were much more likely to see faces in random stimuli.
This could explain why alien hunters seem to find faces or patterns in geological features so frequently.
Dr Wardle concludes: 'Most people who see faces in things recognize that the faces are not real.
'Issues can arise when people interpret visual patterns to have meaning that they do not, or when they have difficulty distinguishing true perceptions from illusory ones.'
WHY DO WE SEE FACES IN INANIMATE OBJECTS?
Pareidolia is the psychological response to seeing faces and other significant and everyday items in random stimuli.
It is a form of apophenia, when people see patterns in random, unconnected data.
There have been multiple occasions when people have claimed to see religious images and themes in unexpected places.
On the red planet, one of the most famous is the 'face on Mars' spotted by one of the Viking orbiters in 1976.
This was later proven to just be a chance alignment of shifting sand dunes.
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