Animals Hiding in Plain Sight (8 Photos)

November 14, 2026

By Vidar

Look at the shape first

An arch in the Saudi desert is an elephant’s trunk. A cliff spire in Oregon has a monkey’s face. A hill in China drinks from a river, and a hollow in Australian granite yawns like a hippo. Nobody shaped those four: water, wind and time did.

In the city, a few artists go looking for the same thing on purpose: a drainpipe that could be a snout, a drain grate that could be an alligator’s back, a security camera that could be an eye. Seeing a creature in a random shape has a name, pareidolia, as Live Science explains. In the four street pieces below, the animal was already there too. The artists just added the rest.

🐊 Alligator Drain — By David Zinn

A square drain grate supplies the alligator’s armored back. David Zinn draws the eyes, feet and curling tail around it, leaving the metal grid clearly visible.

💡 Artist Fact: Before the chalk creatures, David Zinn spent about twenty years as a commercial artist, drawing theatrical posters, newsletter comics and store logos. According to the Ann Arbor Observer, he began by drawing on his own driveway in the early 2000s.

More: They Look Alive — Art by David Zinn

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🐦 Camera-Eyed Bird — By Tom Bob

The round camera becomes a large, glossy eye. A blue body, yellow beak and orange foot turn the wall fitting into a bird. The before photograph gives away how little hardware changed.

More: Tom Bob’s Clever Street Art

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🐜 Drainpipe Anteater — By Tom Bob in New York, USA 🇺🇸

Here an artist takes over. Tom Bob uses a drainpipe as an anteater’s long snout, then adds a body, a heavy eyelid and a trail of ants. The pipe keeps its original bend.

📂 Artwork File · Sourced factsLunch TimeTom Bob · 2018 · Bushwick, Brooklyn, New YorkDrainpipe snoutBushwick CollectivePainted ants (Viewing NYC)1Viewing NYC wrote that he turned a random drain pipe into a 3D anteater at the Bushwick Collective, with ants painted on the sidewalk.Viewing NYC2Bored Panda lists the piece as “Lunch Time (New York)” in its June 2018 Tom Bob feature.Bored Panda20184 JunArtist posts LUNCH TIME on Instagram · via TN20185 JunNew piece at the Bushwick Collective · Viewing NYC20186 JunListed as Lunch Time (New York) · Bored Panda202117 FebThe blue pipe described · My Modern Met202328 NovNamed among his Bushwick works · BKReaderRead the full file →

More: Tom Bob’s Clever Street Art

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🐌 Pipe Snail — By Ernest Zacharevic in Vilnius, Lithuania 🇱🇹

Two capped pipes stand just far enough from the wall to become the snail’s eyes. Ernest Zacharevic adds a low body and a spiral shell between the windows. Gaboras Ileš took the photo.

💡 Artist Fact: Ernest Zacharevic is Lithuanian-born. In 2012 he painted murals for the George Town Festival in Penang, Malaysia, including Children on a Bicycle, which combines paint with real objects that visitors climb on and so join the scene, as the Asia Society notes. The snail plays the same game with two pipes.

More: Street Art by Ernest Zacharevic

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🐘 Elephant Rock (Jabal AlFil) — AlUla, Saudi Arabia 🇸🇦

The gap of blue sky does all the work: it turns one block of sandstone into a head and a trunk that reaches all the way down to the sand. Find the two tiny people at the foot of the arch’s right leg for scale. Elephant Rock was shaped by wind and water erosion over millions of years, according to Experience AlUla.

💡 Size Fact: The elephant measures 52 meters (about 170 feet) at its highest point and stands a 20-minute drive northeast of AlUla’s Old Town, Experience AlUla says. Its best hour is dusk, when the low sun turns the sandstone deep red.

📷 Photo: Richard Mortel / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0).

🐒 Monkey Face — Smith Rock State Park, Oregon, USA 🇺🇸

Seen from the south, the top of this pillar has a monkey’s eyes, nose and mouth, as SummitPost describes it. The mouth is a real cave, and climbers use it: a rope traverse can be rigged from the “mouth cave” across to the neighboring rock. The Crooked River loops below, in Smith Rock State Park near Terrebonne.

💡 Climb Fact: Monkey Face is a 350-foot (107 m) spire. Its first summit ascent came in 1960, by D. Bohn, J. Fraser and V. Staender, according to SummitPost.

📷 Photo: Brandt Kurowski / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0).

🐘 Elephant Trunk Hill — Guilin, China 🇨🇳

The second elephant in this post is drinking. Its head is a limestone hill covered in trees, and its trunk is the rock face that curves down into the Li River, leaving an arch of water between trunk and leg. China Highlights calls Elephant Trunk Hill the symbol of Guilin.

💡 Legend Fact: Local legend says it was a heavenly elephant that fell in love with Guilin’s beauty and was turned to stone while drinking from the river, according to China Highlights. The small tower on its back is the Puxian Pagoda, and the arch at the water is called Moon-in-the-Water Cave.

📷 Photo: 螺钉 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).

🦛 Hippo’s Yawn — Hyden, Western Australia, Australia 🇦🇺

The open mouth is already there: a hollow beneath a heavy, rounded overhang. Hippo’s Yawn is near Wave Rock in Hyden. No painted teeth required.

💡 Place Fact: The shallow cave is about 43 feet (13 m) tall at its mouth. A 1.1-mile (1.7 km) loop from the Wave Rock parking lot passes it and takes 30 to 40 minutes, according to Trails WA. That parking lot is about 208 miles (334 km) east of Perth.

📂 Artwork File · Sourced factsHippo’s YawnNatural rock formation · Hyden, Western Australia, AustraliaGranite tor (Wave Rock)Near Wave Rock13 m mouth (Trails WA)1A granite tor that was once part of the larger outcrop, according to the Wave Rock site.Wave Rock2Trails WA says the shallow cave is about 13 metres tall at its mouth.Trails WA200530 OctPhotographed by Fredrik Bülow · Wikimedia Commons200610 AugPhotographed by Gabriele Delhey · Wikimedia Commons201118 MarPhotographed by Stephen Edmonds · Wikimedia Commons20204 OctPhotographed by Calistemon · Wikimedia CommonsMore photos2005 A visitor shows the scale of the mouth, October 2005Photo: Fredrik Bülow / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)2006 The overhang from the front, August 2006Photo: Gabriele Delhey / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)2011 The overhang in March 2011Photo: Stephen Edmonds / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)Read the full file →