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Cats can see optical illusions
(lemmy.nz)
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this post was submitted on 14 Sep 2026
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If you're not already familiar with the Rotating Snake Illusion, here it is (view full size):
Before I knew what clickbait was, I posted this image to the Winamp Forums 20-some years ago with a title something like, "I found an animated JPEG".
First time I saw the image, I printed it out too because I thought some sort of digital fuckery was going on. Never thought to test it on a cat, though...
It's a schooner!
One of my favorite totally moving PNGs
Is it normal that it doesn't move at all for me? tried all the tricks, like not looking directly at it. Displayed it full size, looked directly at it. Even at the "snakes" tongues.... Nothing.
It didn’t work for me until I turned off night shift/orange glow and turned up my brightness. It needs to be actually white for the white spots.
Scan your eyes quickly across the full size image a couple of times. The more you wiggle your eyes, the more it moves.
If I just fix my eyes at one point in it, it does not move for me either. I suppose people for whom it wriggles all the time must have a good amount of saccades constantly going on, or just do the cat thing naturally (look at point A, it does not move, but all the rest starts moving, so look at point B, B now stops, but all the rest including A starts moving, etc)
Usually this works for me but right now it's completely still for me too. Might be depending on image size, contrast, brightness, fatigue...
Sometimes it can bring out the effect if you slowly bring it closer and further away from you. If it still doesn’t work, you’re a replicant.
Well, you're not a cat.
Might be a dog, though. It's impossible to tell
What are your feelings on Elon Musk? If you think he's a super cool industry leader, I hate to break it to you, but you're an LLM generated in a lab and your memories are false
My feelings on elon musk are somewhat tragic. Started not bad but went somewhere that looks like mental illness and drug abuse.
Now I'm curious and overly-invested. Do you mind writing what unique colors you see here? Don't worry about the pattern, just list each color you see once.
Marine blue, dirty white and a snot like yellow and black
White, black, blue and... Yellow-green?
Huh, that's what I see, too. The only way I personally could get the illusion to stop "moving" was to reduce the contrast and saturation. Maybe check the white-balance and other values on your screen/monitor?
Well, we're all different and how our brains are wired can affect how we see things. It is known that people with schizophrenia don't see optical illusions in the same way most people do.
Not saying you have schizophrenia, but if you don't see optical illusions at all or very faintly then I guess it's not "normal" in the statistical sense. Most people do see optical illusions.
TIL I have schizophrenia...
Well it could be something else. I'm not a psychiatrist but as far as I know they don't use the inability to perceive optical illusions as a diagnosis criterion for schizophrenia.
Are you looking at it on a phone screen or something larger?
It doesn't work very well from phone size.
Ow, my head!
For me, only the dark points change.