ONE optical illusion has taken the internet by storm as it tricks viewers’ brains into seeing something that isn’t there.
You’re in the 1 percent if you spot the hidden animal in this illusion very quickly.
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Somewhere in this forest are not one, but two animals that can be perceived by your brain.
There’s the golden-brown dog, which is standing in front of a dead tree.
And there’s also a hidden cat somewhere in the image, which was shared by TikTok user @HecticNick and recently re-shared in a Reddit thread.
Users are challenged to spot the cat, but it seems many had trouble with this task.
“I’m so confused,” one Reddit user commented.
“Are you sure it’s a cat? Lol,” a second person remarked.
“I saw a totally different cat face near the left-center, and then I realized that’s not actually it,” a third Reddit user added.
In actuality, the cat is hidden in the dead tree branches, which form the structure of a cat.
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Once one Reddit user pointed this out in the thread, immediately others started to see the feline silhouette.
How does this optical illusion work?
This type of optical illusion is classified as cognitive.
Basically, our brains undergo a process called ‘unconscious inferences’ to make sense of the illusion.
Unconscious inferences describe when our minds make a conclusion after looking at certain objects or scenes.
As experts at Colorado College explain: “Cognitive illusions are a result of our conceptions and assumptions about the world, which we impose upon visual stimuli.”
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More simply put, due to the contrast in colors and angles in the illusions, our mind may see something that isn’t actually there – in this case, the cat within the tree branches.
In general, the main reason illusions work is because our eyes see objects that our brain then organizes.
