Filed by Professor Hoot, science and technology correspondent
Mars has produced no confirmed bears, but it has produced an extremely committed bear impression.
A high-resolution image from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shows a circular surface feature that reads, at first glance, like a bear looking straight into the camera. The image was acquired on December 12, 2022, by the orbiter’s HiRISE camera and added to NASA’s photojournal the following January.
The resemblance is real. The bear is not.
NASA brought geology to a face-recognition contest
NASA’s description breaks the face into three ordinary pieces of Martian terrain. Two craters form the apparent eyes. A V-shaped collapse structure supplies the nose. A circular fracture pattern draws the head.
That last feature may have formed as material settled over a buried impact crater. NASA also notes that the “nose” could be a volcanic or mud vent, with nearby deposits potentially produced by lava or mud flows. Those explanations remain possibilities, not a final diagnosis.
Your brain is doing helpful work a little too enthusiastically
NASA calls the effect “ursine pareidolia.” Pareidolia is the tendency to find a familiar shape—especially a face—in an ambiguous pattern. It is why electrical outlets can look startled and why a distant hill on another planet can appear ready to ask who has been sleeping in its bed.
The image itself is serious scientific work. HiRISE can resolve very small surface details from orbit, helping researchers study Mars at fine scale. The University of Arizona operates the camera, while NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter project.
The accidental portrait is therefore doing two jobs. It offers a memorable example of how the brain organizes visual information, and it draws attention to the real geology beneath the illusion.
The official ruling
Mars remains a bear-free planet as far as verified evidence goes. It does, however, have two crater eyes, one collapsed nose, and a circular outline with impeccable comic timing.
Professor Hoot’s conclusion is precise: grin and bear it, then look again.
Sources: NASA Science Photojournal: “A Bear on Mars?”; NASA: “A Bear on Mars?” image article.