A lizard or rat or some kind of critter might have been spotted on Mars. Maybe. Possibly. A photo taken on Mars by NASA's Curiosity Rover that has gone viral has a lot of the Internet's conspiracy theory corner abuzz.

And enthusiastic blogger has spotted something funny-looking between rocks in a photo of Mars that looks like an animal.  Conspiracy theorists all over the Internet promptly exploded with speculation that the Red Planet holds life, particularly after the find was posted on an English-language website. Some are saying it is an amphibian, perhaps a lizard; others are guessing "rat".

 The message board UFOSightings said,

"With water existing on Mars in small amounts, its possible to find such desert animals wandering around...although very rare mind you. Then again, is Nasa placing animals from tiny cyogenic chambers inside the rover onto the surface of Mars to conduct tests?"

The photo is undoubtedly a real NASA photo, not doctored or photoshopped, taken from the Curiosity Rover. But it takes a very active imagination to think that Mars would actually be hospitable for live-ok, ancient microbial life, maybe, according to a recent discovery...but not a little four-legged critter of some sort.

On the UFOSightings board, the founder said,  "Note its lighter color upper and lower eyelids, its nose and cheek areas, its ear, its front leg and stomach. Looks similar to a squirrel camouflaged in the stones and sand by its colors. Hey, who doesn't love squirrels, right?"

Unfortunately, this is all probably the result of a psychological phenomena called pareidolia, which is the brain's habit of picking out faces from everyday objects. The brain wants to recognize faces-- we saw that this week with Brad Pitt's face blindness disease-- so it creates them whenever it can.

But then again...maybe NASA's doing something funny up there?