The proprietor of@practiCALfMRI , a purveyor and conductor of magnetised resonance imaging ( MRI ) experiments , has lately shared a rather curious image on their Twitter feed . It is likely a bug - eyed behemoth , something that would n’t look out of place on the curing ofWho Framed Roger Rabbit ? – and , rather tantalizingly , he asked everyone to “ name the species ! ”

So , can you guess what it could be ?

The thoughts of those annotate under the image diverge wildly . One suggested it was deadened salmon , another suspect it might be a clown fish , and one somehow brought the Prime Minister of Spain into the mix . One rather appropriately thought it might be a Porg , as sport in the upcomingStar Wars : The Last Jedi .

As it turn out , it was – spoiler alerting – a deceased California sea lion , about 12 calendar month old . According to @practiCALfMRI , it was euthanized because ofleptospirosis , a bacterial infection that can be quite dangerous to humans and , indeed , to various animals .

It turns out those bug - center are indeed its peepholes , which just so materialise to take care fairly bonkers in an MRI CAT scan .

Ben Inglis , theMRI masterat the University of California Berkeley ’s Brain Imaging Center , is the someone behind the Twitter account . It ’s secure to say we ’re all hoping that this is n’t the last enigmatic MRI slash he posts online .

MRI rake aretechnological marvels . By put on a strong magnetized line of business to the water molecules in your soundbox , the proton within the atomic number 1 mote all line up like needles on a compass .

Radio wave bursts are then fire at them , which causes them to temporarily be knock out of alignment . The protons then realine themselves , which sends out a little wireless undulation burst of their own , which is picked up by a liquidator .

This is how MRI specialists can see inside your mental capacity , for example , and chase after where the rake is go   – something known as functional MRI ( fMRI ) . They can even infer what you may be thinking depending on which regions of the brain are “ lighting up ” the most during the scan .

Alternatively , as has been adequately show by this gloriously bizarre example , you may sometimes apply them to baffle the cyberspace – while promoting the science behind it all at the very same time .

[ H / T : LiveScience ]