Every now and again, there are things that go viral on the internet that stump us all . Who can forget the days of the iconic multicolored dress when the internet could not decide whether it was blue or if it was white?
Sometimes, when photos go viral, everyone online wants to chime in to give their opinion on what they see and how they analyze it. And, many times, people online cannot come to an agreement on what we see and how we see it. Or if you’re like me, a lot of stuff just goes over your head altogether.
Optical illusions are things that totally mess with our brains.
Optical illusions use different features in paintings, drawings, or photos to play tricks on our brains. Essentially, the picture we are presented with confuses our brains because what we see is not what is reality. Our brain is trying to make sense of it, which is why it can be a bit of a head scratcher.
There’s even a reason they are called “illusions.”
In Latin, the word illusion comes from the word “illudere” which means “to mock.” The meaning comes from the idea that our eyes are playing a trick on our brains, mocking them entirely.
There are several different types of optical illusions.
There is the Mach band illusion , which uses color to deceive our brains in order to make us think that different colors are appearing when they’re not.
Cognitive illusions are when our brain makes assumptions based on pictures or info our eyes see, even though what we perceive may not even be there.
There are also ambiguous and distorted optical illusions.
Recently, the internet has been focusing on a specific optical illusion that has us all stumped.
Posted by Twitter user Tom Hicks, the recent optical illusion that is sweeping the internet and has us all confused is a real doozy. The photo has several lines that appear to be moving and also convey a specific image.
Tom says depending on what you see, it actually points to which side of your brain is the more dominant one.
It all depends if you see a moose or a cat.
Tom shared that if you see a cat or a moose, it may point to how your brain is wired. If you see a cat, you are more dominant on the left side of your brain. If you see a moose, you are more right-brain dominant.
Many people pointed out that they did indeed see the cat.
There are many people online who pointed out you can definitely see the making of a cat in the photo. One Twitter user even pointed out where they found the face in the image and drew a line around it to show others.
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However, it took others more than one try to see anything at all.
Some could not see anything, so a Twitter user suggested making the screen much smaller so that you can see the face. The “closeness” of the image can actually make it harder for our brain to process the image at all.
There were also those who couldn’t see it at all.
Many joked that they couldn’t see anything at all, so they were wondering if that meant that their brain just was not working at all. However, this person was not alone. Not many people could find the cat or the moose.
Others found different animals.
In the image, there were those who found owls! And, they wanted to know what this meant for their cognitive brain function if they did not see a cat or a moose. Birds, while animals, were not ones pointed out by the OP Twitter user.
However, in the end, many said optical illusions have “no bearing” on brain function.
Many Twitter users said that there is “no research” that shows that optical illusions help to prove how our brain functions. But, one Twitter user said this photo seemed to be an “optical illusion photoshopped on top of a cat photo,” which is why everyone “sees the cat.”
Ooops!
