A while back we had the optical illusion of the cat that looked like a crow. Before that there was the sound illusion that took netizens by storm. We receive images of optical illusions via WhatsApp practically every day; safe to say that we love optical illusions. Here is the latest one that everyone is obsessing over.
Dr Michelle Dickinson is a Ted speaker and nanotech engineer who wants to show people that science is everywhere through kitchensciencecookbook.com. She tweeted this image, which appears to consist entirely of vertical black and white lines, and told people to shake their heads to ‘see’ it.
People tried their best to figure out what the image was. They were shaking their heads at their phones in at office, in the metro, in the bus.
People were fascinated! Some found that rolling their chair away from and then back towards the screen also works.
Some people got a headache from shaking their heads too much so they decided to shake the screen by scrolling the image from side to side, or simply by shaking their handheld device.
I can vouch for this. I first saw the image on my desktop and all I could see was a bunch of vertical white and black stripes. When I saw the image again on my phone I could see the image; that of the face of a cat.
I also moved my PC monitor away from me so I was viewing the image at a sharp angle and found that I could see the hidden image quite clearly!
Apart from the above suggestions, there were other helpful ones: Squint at the screen said one. Cross your eyes and then relax them quickly said another.
The image is that of a cat’s face in colour behind the black and white lines. Some people can see it without shaking their head. This twitter user suggests standing on one leg with a finger in one ear to see it… mindlessly shaking one's head at a screen is clearly not hilarious enough for them!
If you have reading glasses, you are likely to experience this: you can see the cat with your glasses off but with them on, it’s just stripes! Weird!
This Twitter user helpfully flipped the image and suggested that others simply scroll up and down to check out the image.
Some people can see the image without shaking the screen, some see it and then don’t see it anymore. What did you see?A cat? Nothing? Are you just more of a dog person?
Do you have something interesting you would like to share? Write to us at [email protected]
