A craftsman makes imitation bread samples at The Sample Factory on February 25, 2008 in Gujo, Gifu, Japan. Gujo City has more than a 50 percent share of the imitation vinyl chloride samples industry. Replica foods are used in most restaurant window displays in Japan, and are popular as souvenirs for tourists. (Photo by Koichi Kamoshida/Getty Images)

A woman carrying cabbage leaves on her head buys tomato at a market in Ahmedabad, India, November 9, 2015. India's villages face a sharp spike in food prices in 2016, as a second year of drought drives up the cost of ingredients such as sugar and milk, and poor transport infrastructure stops falling global prices from reaching rural areas. (Photo by Amit Dave/Reuters)

A bride waits to take her wedding vow during a mass marriage ceremony in which, according to its organisers, 111 Muslim couples took their wedding vows, in Ahmedabad, India January 26, 2017. (Photo by Amit Dave/Reuters)

American actress and singer Hailee Steinfeld attends the UK Gala Screening of “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” at Cineworld Leicester Square on June 01, 2023 in London, England. (Photo by David M. Benett/Alan Chapman/Dave Benett/WireImage)

Artist Victor Nunes combines every-day objects with simple illustrations to turn them into pictures of faces, animals and other playful scenes. His images invite us to look at the world differently and find creative images in our surroundings. Nunes’ art is a great example of pareidolia, which is our propensity to give meaning to random objects (like in this post about seeing faces in random objects). It’s the reason why we associate a smiley face with a human face and why some of Nunes’ pieces of popcorn or bread resemble faces to us.

In this Monday, June 10, 2019 photo, an Indian Rabha tribal Hindu priest pours traditional rice beer to a Rabha girl to perform rituals during Baikho festival at Pantan village, west of Gauhati, India. Every year, the community in India’s northeastern state of Assam celebrates the festival, to please a deity of wealth and ask for good rains and a good harvest. (Photo by Anupam Nath/AP Photo)

“Cassowaries are large, flightless birds related to emus and (more distantly) to ostriches, rheas, and kiwis”, writes Olivia Judson in the September issue of National Geographic magazine. How large? People-size: Adult males stand well over five foot five and top 110 pounds. Females are even taller, and can weigh more than 160 pounds. Dangerous when roused, they’re shy and peaceable when left alone. But even birds this big and tough are prey to habitat loss. The dense New Guinea and Australia rain forests where they live have dwindled. Today cassowaries might number 1,500 to 2,000. And because they help shape those same forests – by moving seeds from one place to another – “if they vanish”, Judson writes, “the structure of the forest would gradually change” too. (Photo by Christian Ziegler/National Geographic)

Bloodthirsty by Thomas P. Peschak, Germany/South Africa — winner, Behaviour: birds. When rations run short on Wolf Island, in the remote northern Galápagos, the sharp-beaked ground finches become vampires. Their sitting targets are Nazca boobies and other large birds. The finches rely on a scant diet of seeds and insects, which regularly dries up, so they drink blood to survive. ‘I’ve seen more than half a dozen finches drinking from a single Nazca booby,’ says Tom. Rather than leave their nests the boobies tolerate the vampires, and the blood loss doesn’t seem to cause permanent harm. (Photo by Thomas P. Peschak/2018 Wildlife Photographer of the Year)