Optical Illusions

It's the Christmas Season and for many it’s a time of surprise packages all wrapped up hiding their content until they are opened on Christmas day. As a little taste of fun, I’m posting some optical surprises that I hope will give you a few little jolts of pleasure as you 'unwrap' the mystery of the images. As for the first one upper left, can you see that the coloured spaces - around the light ones spelling ‘optical' - trace out the word ‘illusion’?

 

Try to fill in the gaps to make sense of the black blotches in the next two images on the right and left? Our brains have a remarkable aptitude for recognizing patterns or finding meaning given only a few visual clues.  It’s as if we have a preconceived picture and after searching around, it all at once clicks into view and then you wonder how you couldn't see it before. 

I find the harder I try, the more difficult it is to mentally reconstruct the image. Don’t be put off if you don’t ‘see’ the answers right away – or not at all – once you do recognize what is depicted you can never look at the images again without ‘seeing’ it!

On the right, try quickly saying out loud the colour of the words, not the words them selves. Apparently it is hard for most of us to do because our left brain recognizes words and is dominant over our right brain that perceives colours.

On the other hand, on the left, the right-brain seems to dominate and it will probably take you a minute or so to read the word the image spells out.  A clue before you check the answer – it is similar to the optical illusion sign at the top.

In the illusion on the right,  how many horses you can see in the snow.  I count five.  Animals and insects often use this kind of camouflage to make themselves more difficult for their predators to see. Because motion is easy to track, a creature's instinct is to freeze in its tracks - and hope for the best.

One last illusion, which soldier is the tallest?   Rie 

1 Right - Horse and Rider  2. Left - Bearded man 4. Left - LIFE
5. Left - They're all the same height.