You might not be convinced that the Matrix, let alone the idea that it can glitch, is real. And that is totally fine; it might take donning a tin foil hat to believe in it. But you have to admit that it is not every day we see identical animals lined up next to each other or posed exactly the same way. Whatever it is that’s causing these occurrences, perhaps just simple coincidences, they are fascinating to see. 

When it comes to animals having doppelgangers, we often only hear about owners who look like their pets, rather than pets who look like one another. Psychologist Sadahiko Nakajima has dedicated his research to exploring human and animal doppelgangers, and he has found that it’s very common for owners to resemble their fur babies. He has several theories as to why this happens, one of which being the exposure effect. This essentially means that we are drawn to familiar things, so pet owners tend to gravitate towards animals with similar facial features to their own, particularly around the eyes. Perhaps this is also why animal doppelgangers tend to find one another? 

Glitches in the Matrix can happen with anything and everything, though. They don’t have to feature animals who look creepily alike. And although the first Matrix film was released in 1999, many people have held onto the ideas discussed in the movies. In 2021, film directory Rodney Ascher released A Glitch in the Matrix, a documentary tackling the question of whether or not we’re living in a simulation, featuring testimonies, philosophical evidence and even scientific explanations in his search for the answer. 

Jordan Hoffman, a writer for Vanity Fair, spoke to Rodney Ascher about the film and discussed the world’s fascination with this topic. Hoffman first notes that the documentary features some very upsetting scenes, including one early on in the film where an “eyewitness” vividly describes a terrifying dissociative episode he had. Whether the Matrix exists or not, Hoffman says the world is certainly a bizarre place.  

Hoffman explains that A Glitch in the Matrix is a heavy film to watch, and it even features a testimony from the so-called “Matrix murderer” Josh Cooke, who at 19 years old shot his mother and father, claiming he was living in the Matrix. Hoffman wondered if the nature of this documentary started to mess with director Rodney Ascher’s head, but thankfully, he said he managed to keep work separate from his personal life. “Even having conversations with Joshua Cooke about the murder of his parents, I would go home and play with my kid, then fall asleep in front of the TV,” Ascher explained. “It’s a day at the office. I like to think that my movies are crazier than I am in person. What affected me was being in the mix room—watching it big, hearing the sound design and music that Jonathan Snipes made. Hearing that existential dread at a loud volume does start to work through your lower intestines.”

And although Rodney Ascher was happy to make a film exploring possible glitches in the Matrix, he understands that sometimes the reason people believe in such an idea is due to the use of psychedelic drugs, though he decided not to discuss that in his documentary. “We considered including the topic of DMT, in which people who take it go to another reality," he told Vanity Fair. "If you read the book The Spirit Molecule, there are descriptions of people who take a short psychedelic trip that reminded me a lot of sleep paralysis, in that there are reports of similar apparitions,” Ascher explained. “One possibility suggests that it is not a hallucination from random imaginary sparks—that you are seeing something ‘real’ from a heightened sense of awareness.”

There are a variety of possible explanations as to why we might think we’ve observed a glitch in the Matrix. One interesting point that Dr. Steven Novella brings up on his blog, Neurologica, is that we could be experiencing glitches in our brains rather than reality. “There is no question that people experience glitches in their stream of perception of external reality,” Dr. Novella writes. “This is a common topic of psychological study, and pretty much the entire field of stage illusion. One very common theme of critical thinking and scientific skepticism is that we seek to carefully explain these apparent glitches as largely neurological phenomena (an approach I call neuropsychological humility).”

Dr. Novella explains that when we experience an anomaly or an amazing coincidence, the idea of neuropsychological humility means that we should first consider that it was a glitch in the way our brain functions, rather than assuming there were external phenomena at play. “Our stream of experience is an extremely active constructive process,” Dr. Novella notes. “Perceptions are filtered, altered, enhanced, compared, matched to internal patterns, and altered again. Memory is also an active constructive process. Attention, cognitive biases, and expectation all shape our perceptions of reality.”

Dr. Novella goes on to note that the brain is not perfect. “Even things that the brain does well comes at a cost. Our brains are great at finding patterns in data – but that talent means that our brains also tend to see possible patterns in noise,” he writes. “Further, the brain is not always functioning ‘normally’ (within nominal parameters). We may be sleepy, drunk, highly emotional, or even experience seizures or similar neurological phenomena. But to be clear, even when functioning perfectly, the brain is subject to glitches.”

“The bottom line is that parsing reality is horrifically complex, and our brains do an incredible job, but they are also an evolved mess,” Dr. Novella says. “Like all adaptations, they work well enough with the material at hand, but are not perfect, include many trade-offs, and have serious limitations. It is no wonder that our perception of reality is a little fuzzy at the edges.” Our brains making mistakes can’t account for the photos on this list, as we have photographic evidence of these occurrences. But when it comes to spooky and unsettling experiences that we can’t explain, don’t count out the possibility that your brain just had a hiccup.

Is this list convincing you that we're living in a simulation? Or at least making you want to rewatch The Matrix? We hope you're enjoying these adorable, yet maybe a little unsettling, photos of animals looking identical or mimicking one another. Keep upvoting the pics that would have blown your mind if you had seen them in real life, and feel free to share any of your own personal "glitch in the matrix" stories in the comments. Then, if you want to check out even more animal doppelgangers, you can find a previous Bored Panda article featuring animals who look suspiciously like celebrities right here.