'Spoon' on Mars? You're seeing things

Remember the nursery rhyme in which the cow jumped over the moon and dish ran away with the spoon?

It appears the spoon wound up on Mars, according to a curious recent photo snapped by the Curiosity rover.

In yet another optical illusion that's stirred hyperactive imaginations on Earth, the so-called floating spoon seen in an image taken Sunday is just a rock shaped by wind, what geologists call a ventifact, NASA explained.

Curiosity captured the strangeness on its 1,089th day exploring the red planet, where it landed in August 2012.

As Space.com points out, there's "a long history of seeing strange shapes" on Mars, especially the "face" photographed by the Viking 1 lander in 1976.

Since then, other shapes, including a rat, woman, jelly doughnut and — more recently — a crab, have been reported by eagle-eyed observers poring over NASA's photos. So far, they're all rocks, though. Every last one.

No word from NASA about any lunar bovine sightings, however.