Because the even the most evolved human mind loves to play tricks, we often see things differently from what they really are. Take the infamous "face on Mars", subject of tremendous debate in the astronomical community for many years. It looks for all the world like a human face carved of rock, an eerie indicator that we may not be the only intelligent life in the universe. Skeptical scientists feel they have proven, however, that it is no more than a land mass over which shadow falls in such a pattern to resemble a human face. There is no way of truly knowing if the face deliberate or an accident of nature. There were no eye witnesses to its formation!
The face on Mars is a simulacrum. Simulacrum is, by definition:
Sim-u-la-crum 1. An image or representation. 2. An unreal or vague semblance.
(Source: The American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
...so it vaguely resembles a human face, but that does not necessarily mean it is a human face.
The famous psychological "test" whereby a pattern in black on white paper, looking rather like a vase at first glance, turns out to be the silhouettes of two people face-to-face, demonstrates that each of us see things uniquely. And that very often, we see things differently from how they really are, or how they were created to be seen.
Further complicate this issue of perception by adding in emotion, to which even the most stoic investigator is on occasion subjected, and you have muddy waters indeed. We want to see a cryptid, so that we can prove that they exist, and we are predisposed to see cryptids because we're always on the look-out for them. Before you know it, a trash bag caught in a bush becomes an ultra-rare silicon-winged super bat, engaging in an uncharacteristic sunbathing ritual.
A basic rule of thumb whenever you have found something unusual, to rule out simulacrum, is to show the thing to as many objective third parties as you can. Showing it to a group of excited cryptozoologists probably won't give you very unbiased results. Instead, show it to a group of people, preferably people who don't know you and won't feel pressured to tell you what you want to hear, who have no stake in cryptozoological advancement. If they all see what you see, you might just be on to something. If it turns out to be a simulacrum, well. Don't fret. Nature is quite a trickster. Refocus, regroup, and keep looking!
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