Hint
They are very, very tiny.
Spoiler
They are insect eggs.
It's so cool how stick insect eggs look like little clay pots and have so much variety.
It's a neat thread so here's an archive.today page of a Nitter instance - archive.today.
These insects are masters of disguise—even before hatching - National Geographic
Photo caption...
Photographer Levon Biss specializes in tiny objects in order to make “the invisible visible.” He spent hours cleaning these phasmid eggs with distilled water and one paintbrush hair under a microscope. The eggs in this composite grid of images average about 0.12 inch long.
They remind me of netsuke.
A netsuke (根付, [netsɯ̥ke]) is a miniature sculpture, originating in 17th century Japan. Initially a simply-carved button fastener on the cords of an inrō box, netsuke later developed into ornately sculpted objects of craftsmanship.
If I didn't know and I guessed - I probably would have spent literally a minute or two trying to figure out how the trick question misdirection worked because obviously they are pots or something manmade.
It makes me laugh because I used to make fractals. The program I used - Chaoscope - produced some natural looking 3d shapes. I could make them one after another by pushing a button. And I could vary the randomness from 1 to 100. Every time I made such fractals it was a reminder that nature (and/or chance) can make very surprising and fantastic varieties of stuff. Also - just a few days ago I googled "are no two snowflakes alike" after I watched the movie Snow Cake.