6 girls, 5 pairs of legs
When this particular photo started making rounds across the internet, people were chomping at the bit to figure out just WTF was going on. There are clearly 6 girls here, yet we only see 5 sets of legs. It didn’t take too long for someone to use paint to simply describe the odd photograph.
The answer lies right here. The blue jeans do not belong to the girl highlighted in blue, but rather to the girl in yellow- who happens to be leaning uncomfortably to the left. The girl in blue is wearing black jeans and her legs are mostly hidden behind the girl in red. It’s all just one big optical illusion.
Shiny Legs
This is a perfect example of how the little details can make an image something entirely different. What a lot of people saw in this photo when it hit the web, was a pair of incredibly shiny legs. Either wrapped tightly in plastic, or covered heavily in oil, people were convinced that these legs were shiny.
However, the reality is that all this photo is of, is a girl who painted her legs with some white paint. It just so happens that because of the placement of the lines, our brains immediately assumed that they were reflections of light. This made the entire image appear to be of a pair of incredibly shiny legs. This effect is often used in many forms of art such as painting and animation.
The red strawberries
This photo is rather interesting. What we see is a stunning display of beautiful fresh strawberries on a tart. Delicious, juicy, and red…right? Apparently not. In fact, there is no red in this photo at all. Here’s why.
This is the same photo but with a palate showing every colour that’s in this photo on the right. There’s no red. But you’re still seeing red on the strawberries, right? Don’t be alarmed, so is everyone else. This is because of something called “Colour Constancy.” What’s that all about? Well, basically your brain is showing off just how smart it is. Despite the colours that we see (varying shades of blue and grey) our brain knows that strawberries are red. Even though there is no red in the photo, we perceive the image as one with red in it. Our brains are taking the grey pixels and automatically removing the bias of the blue, allowing us to see red.
The Ambiguous Cylinder Illusion
At first glance, what we see here are a bunch of beautiful shapes. But did you know that these shapes are actually the result of mirrored images of each other?
These shapes are called “ambiguous cylinders” and they change shape depending on your perspective. Rather, your brain perceives them as a different shape depending on the angle of which you are looking at them. For a better visual understanding of how this illusion works, you can check out a video of it.
These Dots
Almost everyone who has ever looked at an optical illusion has seen this dreaded masterpiece. This image contains 12 black dots that seem to appear and disappear whenever the hell they want to. It’s pretty damn crazy. There are 12 black dots on this image, however, we just can’t seem to see them all at once. WHY?!
When the dots are highlighted with circles, it’s a hell of a lot easier to look at all of the dots at once, isn’t it? The thing is, as humans, we simply don’t have great peripheral vision. What is happening is that our brains are trying to guess what we’re seeing with our peripheral vision, and black dots over grey lines essentially become nothing but a blur.
Brick Wall
This is one of those things that make you go “How the f*** did I not notice that?!” What we see here is a brick wall, right? Welp, there’s more.
It isn’t just a brick wall. It’s a brick wall smoking a cigar. Because there isn’t much of a shadow, our brains don’t automatically realize that it is in fact sticking out of the wall. Rather, it just assumes that the ash at the end of the cigar is simply a rock.
Bubbles
This photo had people all over the internet arguing about whether or not this little girl was underwater. With her eyes closed and what look bubbles floating around her, it’s easy to think that she had just jumped into the deep end of the pool.
The answer is no, she isn’t underwater. The reasoning is really simple. If she were underwater, her hair would not only be wet, but it’d be floating. Especially if she had just submerged herself. Also, the photo shows the water under her feet splashing outwards, which does not happen underwater. The droplets of water by her face definitely add to the illusion that she is underwater, however, that’s all it is. An illusion.
The Cafe Wall Illusion
This famous illusion dates back to the 1800s. Victoria Skye made this version of the illusion that has everybody on earth thinking that these lines are clearly wonky. But they aren’t. At all. In fact, they’re incredibly straight.
When the image is blurred, we can see that the lines are in fact completely straight. They form a perfect grid. Without all the distractions of the details, our brains can properly see how the lines are straight.
Kendall Jenner seems to be missing a leg.
Earlier this year, InStyle magazine posted an Instagram photo of Kendall Jenner, Kylie Jenner, and Hailey Baldwin hanging out together after the Golden Globes.
They are all very leggy. So it's odd that one went missing. Kendall's left leg is nowhere to be seen. Where'd it go?
It's under her dress.
Eventually, the internet figured it out. It was under her dress all along! If you look really closely, you can see the horizontal top of her leg. She's pointing her knee to her right and twisting her body forward to be more prominent in the picture.
There's something off about this viral photo. Can you spot it?
This particular image went viral on Imgur, uploaded by a user going by the name of what047. It has the caption "It took me forever to find what was wrong here..."
Do you see it?
All the faces in the background are the same.
You may have been looking to closely at the women in the foreground. Nothing is off about them.
But in the background, everyone has the same head. Someone edited the image so that everyone's head was replaced with one belonging to a curly-haired guy looking down.
The image's trick is a good reminder that the details you're looking for aren't always in the foreground. Sometimes they're in unexpected places.
Is this dress blue and black or white and gold?
The dress! How can anyone forget the dress? black and blue? white and gold? Why does it look different to everyone?
The original image was posted on Tumblr by a woman named Caitlin McNeill, a singer-songwriter from Scotland, after she sent the picture to her friends, who disagreed on the color.
It's black and blue. Here's the science behind why it looks different for different people.
It's black and blue.
The science of why people saw the dress differently is a little complicated, and scientists offer different explanations for some of the details. The peer-reviewed Journal of Vision even published several articles about it.
Stated plainly, the way your brain determines color relies on two things: the color of the object you're seeing and the color of the light source. The image was overexposed, meaning the light in the image overwhelmed the color of the subject. Parts of the dress were also in shadow. This all implies that the dress had a partial light makeup of bluish shadow, reflecting off the dress itself, and yellow light, from the store's bad lighting. Parts of the image also seem to indicate that the dress is backlit.
Depending on whether your brain saw the dress more in shadow or more in a direct light, you'd see the colors differently.
These two train track segments are the same size.
One example of the illusion went viral when BBC presenter Marc Blank-Settle posted a video of it on Twitter, using his son's train set.
Both curves in the track are the same size, but one the one on the left appears larger than the one on the right when they're next to each other.
Yes, really. The illusion is called the Jastrow illusion.
There are a few different theories for how the Jastrow effect works. But basically, your brain compares the two sides of the respective track pieces that are next to each other. So instead of comparing the right side of one piece to the right side of the other, it compares the right side of the left track to the left side of the right track, because those two sides are next to each other.
The baffling carpet looks like it's full of craters.
It's at a branch of the French retailer FNAC. The carpet is so disorienting that the Twitter account @WHS_Carpet, which skewers bad carpets at retailers, took special pleasure in calling it out.
The floor itself is flat, but the curvy lines make it disorienting.
Because of the way the carpet is crosshatched, bigger holes between the lines make it look like there's additional depth. In reality, it's still flat — just headache-inducing.
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