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optical illusions

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Optical illusion that looks like a person with two dogs has people totally tripping

It takes a while to see it, but there are not two dogs in the photo.

@Rainmaker1973/X, @farhadge/X

Where is the third dog in this photo?

Optical illusions are wild. The way our brains perceive what our eyes see can be way off base, even when we're sure about what we're seeing. Plenty of famous optical illusions have been created purposefully, from the Ames window that appears to be moving back and forth when it's actually rotating 360 degrees to the spiral image that makes Van Gogh's "Starry Night" look like it's moving.

But sometimes optical illusions happen by accident. Those ones are even more fun because we know they aren't a result of someone trying to trick our brains. Our brains do the tricking all by themselves.

The popular Massimo account on X shared a photo that appears to be a person and two dogs in the snow. The more you look at it, the more you see just that—two dogs and someone who is presumably their owner.

But there are not two dogs in this picture:

There are three dogs in this picture. Can you see the third?

Full confession time: I didn't see it at first. Not even when someone explained that the "human" is actually a dog. My brain couldn't see anything but a person with two legs, dressed all in black, with a furry hat and some kind of furry stole or jacket. My brain definitely did not see a black poodle, which is what the person actually is.

Are you looking at the photo and trying to see it, totally frustrated?

The big hint is that the poodle is looking toward the camera. The "hat" on the "person" is the poodle's poofy tail, and the "scarf/stole" is the poodle's head.

Once you see it, it fairly clear, but for many of us, our brains did not process it until it was explicitly drawn out.

As one person explained, the black fur hides the contours and shadows, so all our brains take in is the outline, which looks very much like a person facing away from us.

People's reactions to the optical illusion were hilarious.

One person wrote, "10 years later: I still see two dogs and a man."

Another person wrote, "I agree with ChatGPT :)" and shared a screenshot of the infamous AI chatbot describing the photo as having a person in the foreground. Even when asked, "Could the 'person' be another dog?" ChatGPT said it's possible, but not likely. Ha.

One reason we love optical illusions is that they remind us just how very human we are. Unlike a machine that takes in and spits out data, our brains perceive and interpret what our senses bring in—a quality that has helped us through our evolution. But the way our brains piece things together isn't perfect. Even ChatGPT's response is merely a reflection of our human imperfections at perception being mirrored back at us.

Sure is fun to play with how our brains work, though.


This article originally appeared in January.

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Joy

Can you figure out what this doodle is?

Once you see it, you’ll never unsee it.

via Facebook

Do you see it?

Facebook user Savannah Root from Missouri stared at the photo above for hours before she finally figured out what it was.

Everyone that sees it either gets it right away or sits there stumped. The picture is so mystifying that after one week, it's been shared over 33,000 times.

For the solution, scroll down past the comments to reveal the hidden picture.

comments, social media, confusion

Is it formidable?

assets.rebelmouse.io

realization, challenge, solution

Amazing!

via Facebook

eureka, misconception, hallucination, image, puzzle

A light bulb moment.

via Facebook

shame, fear, stress

Stressing out.

via Facebook

talent, insect, cowboy

Not an insect.

via Facebook

It's a cowboy with half of his face obscured by a shadow. Facebook user Cristian-Dumitru Popescu created a cool graphic that explains it.

doodle, illusion, brain teaser.

The cowboy face breakdown.

via Facebook

This article originally appeared on 09.23.17

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optical illusions
Pop Culture

Bizarre optical illusion has people either seeing a car door or the beach

What do you see?

Photos combined from Pixabay.

Car door and the beach.

Ancient sage Obi-Wan Kenobi once remarked, "Your eyes can deceive you, don't trust them." Well, he's right, kinda.

Our eyes bring in information and it's our brain's job to decipher the image and determine what we're seeing. But our brains aren't always correct. In fact, sometimes they can be so wrong we wonder if we are accurately interpreting reality at all.

After all, our brain can only label things if it knows that they are. If you lived on a deserted island your whole life and a cow showed up on the beach, you'd have no idea what to label it.

The latest baffling image that's making people across the internet doubt their senses is a picture tweeted out by Twitter user nayem. "If you can see a beach, ocean sky, rocks and stars then you are an artist," the comment reads.

But some people who see it also think it looks like a car door. What do you see?

beach, car door, rusty door

Beach or a rusty door?

via nxyxm / Twitter

If your brain told you the picture is of a lovely evening laying on the beach then you're definitely an optimist. But, according to the person who posted it, the photo is of the bottom of a rusted out car door. Not very romantic, is it?

art, comedy, sense of humor

The tweet has since gone viral, earning over 5,000 likes.

via nxym /Twitter

Here's what Twitter users thought about the illusion.

twitter trolls, twitter responses, twitter fights

Yum.

via Twitter.

This guy must be hungry.

viral images, social media, common questions

A clever call back.

via Twitter.

This guy is having flashbacks to 2015.

sense of humor, learning skills, spacial relationships

Knowing the difference through skills.

via Twitter.

Your perception determines your reality.

artist, imagination, speculation

Drawing skills.

via Twitter.

This guy explains it perfectly.

creative thoughts, community, Twitter chat

Boat on the beach.

via Twitter.

This guy has a great imagination.


This article originally appeared on 8.16.21

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comedy
Pop Culture

Trippy optical illusion makes people swear a Coke can is red. It's not. At all.

Try to make your brain NOT see the can as red.

Photo by Jeanson Wong on Unsplash

We know Coca-Cola cans are red, but that's not why it looks red in a viral optical illusion.

Optical illusions are wild. We can look at an image and swear up and down we see one thing, only to find out what we're seeing isn't what we're actually seeing at all.

Some optical illusions regularly go viral, like the not-really-two-dogs photo or the cat going up or down stairs drawing or the moving Van Gogh painting. (And we all remember the debates over "the dress," right?)

One that's making the rounds now is an image that appears to be a pixelated photo of someone holding a Coca-Cola can. The colors are muted, but the can definitely looks red.

But it's not.

In reality, the only visible colors in this image are black, white and teal (or cyan).

from woahdude

Seriously, zoom in.

Trippy, right? There's a similar version that uses a more stripey pixelation:

And there's another version made out of black, white and yellow that makes the Coke can appear blue (negating the idea that our brain is automatically making the can red because it's the color our brain expects it to be).

Again, no blue in this image when you zoom in. There's only black, white and yellow.

So what exactly is going on here?

It's the complicated way our colors work and the way our eyes perceive and process them in our brains. Here's how one Reddit user explained it when someone claimed the white in the Coke can wasn't really white:

"It is white. This is an example of simultaneous color contrast, a phenomenon that occurs when two adjacent colors influence one another, changing your perception of the colors. The cones in your eyes make it seem like it is pink. Cones give your eyes good color vision but can also play tricks with your brain, hence why from a distance, ie not zoomed in, the color appears pink and why you see the can of Coke as “red” even though there is no red in the image.

Essentially, the way your eyes see color in the first place is by contrasting it with other colors."

Another commenter verified that the white is, in fact, pure white. "The pixel color on the white is: #FFFFFF which means pure white. If there were any red in there we would see a variation on it like #FFFEFE. It is not a trick. It really is pure white," they wrote. "I too thought it might be a compression trick. Nope. Our brains just be weird."

Indeed, our brains do be weird.

Photographer and filmmaker Jared Bendis explained it in another way with a demonstration of the "Retinex effect," also known as color constancy. Essentially, because our eyes have to recognize color in varying kinds and amounts of light (otherwise how would we find food at different times of day), our brain is excellent at filling in blanks. How it works is rather complicated, so Bendis shows how it works using a photo of a bowl of fruit.

Our brains may be weird, but also very cool.

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