"This appears as an eye, but in reality is a trillion-mile long tunnel of glowing gases, known as the Helix Nebula."

To an organism small enough, the human eye would be perceived as a trillion-mile long tunnel of glowing gases.

As above, so below.

Very interesting.... but what were the "Islamic" doll and Tinky Winky actually saying?

The Baby Cuddle & Coo Doll, according to the manufacturer Mattel / Fisher Price, features cooing, giggling, and baby babbling sounds, with only one scripted word, "Mama,". Still, parents throughout the U.S. became so concerned about the sounds emanating from the doll that a group was formed, entitled MAMA (Moms Asking Mattel for Accountability), to convince stores to remove the doll. The second talking doll, Tinky Winky, was from the Teletubbies TV show. According to its manufacturer, the Itsy Bitsy Entertainment Co., this doll is in fact saying “Again, again” from a snippet of audio taken from the show.

Priming and, I believe, consonant confusions due to poor recordings accounted for a similar phenomenon a couple of years ago with Elmo dolls appearing to say, "Who wants to die!" I wrote about that, with consonant confusion analysis, on my blog

Thanks for your input - I hadn't heard about that one, but did find a newspaper report of an Elmo doll apparently saying 'Kill James' according to its two-year-old owner, who happened to be called James.

I agree about compression schemes causing problems. But - as a further issue - as shown in the 'phantom words' demos posted here, people do seem to hear what's on their minds - and this can go beyond anything with an explanation in terms of psychoacoustics. For example, after hearing a pattern consisting of the words 'high' and 'low' in class, one student insisted that I had inserted 'Give it to me, baby' in the track!