Harriet Brewis
Dec 12, 2023
(Saurabh Desai Photography)
Forget hidden french fries or mind-bending shapes, the best optical illusions are found in the animal kingdom.
Just think of how some insects can essentially transform themselves into leaves and owls become one with the trees.
Yes, camouflage is truly the OG of brain twisters, and where better to seek examples of this than… Reddit?
That’s right, users of the platform (or, more specifically, the r/interesting subreddit) have become obsessed with a picture of a snow leopard.
The reason for their fixation is simple: most of them can’t actually see it.
The image was shared to the forum six months ago with the caption: “Spot the snow leopard and the time it took u [sic] to spot.”
It has gone on to rack up more than 32,400 upvotes and 3,700 comments, with Redditors sharing their frustration at the challenge.
“My sense of scale was all messed up here,” one complained. “I thought this was taken from way farther back so I was looking for something small.”
“I was too,” admitted another. “Only when I was zooming that its face staring at me became obvious.”
A third explained how the confusion worked, writing: “There's nothing else in the picture that can give your brain an absolute sense of scale and it short circuits your brain's pattern recognition for some reason.”
Meanwhile, others confessed that they’d been looking for a large, white cat, not the spotted predator in the picture.
Still, for all the vexation, there were some more philosophical musings, too.
One conciliatory commentator pointed out: “Either way, evolution is fascinating in terms of how it leads species to blend in so well and just generally survive within their respective environments.”
And you can't argue with that, now can you?
We got there in the end(Saurabh Desai Photography)
Still, be honest, how long did it take you to find it?
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