Some images just catch us off guard. You look at them expecting to see one thing, but then when you find out the truth behind it you are left scratching you head. Whether it's an optical illusion, or the infamous couch centaur, people see these images all over the internet and no one can understand why they are capable of messing with our minds so much.
We're here to help you out! These viral images have been circling the internet for a long time, but we can help answer the questions you have about them.
The Couch Centaur
People on Reddit were calling the girl in the middle a "couch centaur" after everyone had issues finding her legs. But as it turns out there is a much more simple solution.
It's just the way their black pants blend together that makes it look like there aren't enough pairs of legs.
Shiny Legs
When this image was posted, a lot of people thought the legs looked very shiny, but they were wrong. Even though some people thought that they were either wrapped in plastic or covered in oil, it is just white paint.
How many dots do you see?
How many dots do you see in this picture? Does it look like they are moving? Well, they aren't, you're brain is just having issues with the image. But look, if you add circles around each dot it helps your peripheral vision sort out the contrast between the grey and black.
There are still more illusions to explain...
The Sky Blue Café Wall
The illusion first appeared on a wall in a café in England, but it managed to confuse everyone. The image looks as though all the lines are on a slant. In reality every line is running either perfectly horizontal or perfectly vertical. The diamond patterns help to distort your perception, but if you blur the image it makes it clear that all the lines are straight.
These strawberries aren't red
There is a lot of debate over this image, but apparently it all boils down to our brains doing some weird things. In the twitter comments people claim that the strawberries are red but that everything is just tinted blue, but when someone isolated the individual pixels there was no red in the image.
Apparently this is caused by "Color Constancy" which is a phenomenon that happens in your brain when it is trying to prove it knows things. Our brain apparently perceives these berries as red because we know they should be red.
This picture is not moving
This one is particularly hard on the eyes. It looks as though it is moving and spinning, but there is nothing about it that moves. It's called the "Peripheral Drift Illusion" and it's the organization of colors that will make your brain think it's moving. Even blurring it doesn't seem to stop it completely but it if you look at specific parts of the image you can see that it's not moving.
Rotation
This is another illusion that uses color to trick your mind. But if you add some black lines, you can see very clearly that nothing in the image is moving.
