If you’ve ever seen magician/comedian Pete Firman’s “illusion” clips, you’ll know he has an uncanny way of demonstrating just how fascinating our minds can be. Whether it’s watching faces morph or his infamous “sword box” trick, it can often make you question your very eyes. In this case, he has done that quite literally.
In a clip going viral online, he posts a cartoon photo of a frog and a pig. Each is colored in contrasting hues from what they would look like in reality. The frog, in this case, is a purplish pink and the pig is a bright, almost neon green. In the middle of the two drawings is a black “X.”
Colors that don’t exist
Firman exclaims, “I can make you see colors that don’t exist. Have a look at this image.” He points to the aforementioned miscolored frog and pig. “You’ll see that both of the animals are the wrong colors. But I’m gonna control your brain and make you fix this yourself. Keep staring at this black cross.”
A black X pops into the middle of the frame. “Keep staring at it. Try not to blink if you can help it. And also keep your phone an equal distance away from your face; that should strengthen the illusion.”
He then once again makes the proclamation, “You’re gonna see colors that aren’t actually there. In just a minute, I’m gonna take away the colors from my cartoon. But you will see the pig in bright pink and the frog in bright green.” Firman then dramatically (and rightfully so) reiterates that one should keep staring at the black cross for the following ten seconds, which he counts down.
Look again
He does as promised and removes the color to show just a black-and-white drawing. But lo-and-behold, at least for me, suddenly the pig is pink, and the frog is green. Only, it isn’t! Both animals are actually only drawn in black and white (once he takes the coloring away), and yet my brain color-corrected them on its own. (Note: This only worked on my computer, not my phone.)
In a piece posted on the University of Southampton’s site from the Journal of Communications Psychology, they note how the illusion works. First, they explain what’s actually happening. “The phenomenon of ‘colour afterimages’ is when you see illusory – or false – colours after staring at real colours for a longer time. Through this, the brain can be tricked into seeing colour in a black and white image.”
Color afterimages
But why? They cite Dr. Christoph Witzel, an Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Southampton, who explains it’s the “cone cells in our eyes.” He shares, “Colour afterimages is an age-old classical phenomenon, but the more we have understood about it, the more it has become the subject of confusion amongst experts and in textbooks.”
He notes what many have believed in the past. “Some say the phenomenon is caused by responses in the light-sensitive cone photoreceptor cells in our eyes, while others have argued it’s due to the neural pathways making us see opposing colours. Others have even suggested it’s due to some yet unknown mechanism in the brain.
We’ve finally got a conclusive answer – colour afterimages are not opposing colours as everybody had thought. Instead, those illusory colours reflect precisely what happens in the cone photoreceptors.”
Witzel conducted many experiments and compared results. “Across all the experiments, we found the same thing – afterimages are not caused by opposing colours, as many scientists have believed. Instead, they match what we’d expect if they were caused by how cone cells in the eye adapt to light. So, we have been able to say for certain that afterimages come from cone cells and not from other parts of the visual system.”
This scientific/medical explanation doesn’t stop people on social media from jokingly accusing Firman of witchery.
Complimentary colors
On Instagram, the post has over 93,000 likes and many comments. One person shared their neuroscientific knowledge. “Negative chromatic afterimage: When you stare at a colored light for a while and then look away, you may briefly see its complementary color. This happens because the color-sensitive cells in your eyes and visual system adapt to the prolonged stimulus, temporarily reducing their response. When you look at a neutral surface, the opposing color signal becomes relatively stronger, creating the illusion of the complementary color.”
Is anything real?
This person asked a rather poignant question from a philosophical standpoint: “Well, it’s a humbling experience: how we see reality is through data from the visual sense translated by the brain. If it’s this much vulnerable, how do we know what we see is the way it is in reality?”
On the X platform, the clip has 47.5 million views, with one commenter pointing out an interesting fact (complete with video proof). “The post makes it seem like the shapes matter and your brain is assigning the ‘correct’ colors, but they don’t. The same effect works with squares.”
He then posts a video of green and pink squares with an “X” in the middle. After participating in that experiment, the colors transpose again, proving that it’s not our “minds” color-correcting for the animal. It’s indeed the tired eye cones doing the work.
