Most confusing photos are not fakes. They are ordinary scenes caught from an odd angle, at a lucky moment, or with two objects lined up so neatly that the brain merges them into one. A squirrel looks the size of a car, a sweet potato becomes a seal, and an iceberg seems to wear a superhero mask. None of the 25 pictures below needed editing software to fool you.
What they need is a viewer. Our visual system is built to make sense of the world quickly, so it fills gaps, guesses at distance and hunts for faces and animals in everything it sees. Most of the time that shortcut serves us well. In these photos it backfires in a harmless and often funny way.
We have grouped the images by the kind of trick they play: size and perspective, landscapes that look impossible, faces in objects, animals that blend or blur, and patterns made by ice, ink and hair. Each caption explains what is really going on, and the photographers and original posters are credited at the end. Take a moment with each one before reading the answer.
Size and perspective tricks
Forced perspective is the oldest trick in photography. The camera has only one eye, so it cannot judge depth the way we do with two. Line up a near object with a far one and the picture flattens them into the same plane.
The giant squirrel. A grey squirrel sitting on a windowsill lines up perfectly with a parked car in the street below, so it seems to be standing beside the vehicle at the size of a bear. The giveaway is the window frame in the foreground and the slightly soft focus on the street. The photo was shared on Twitter by BoringEnormous.
The pirate ship on the beach. This black ship with skull-and-crossbones sails is a kite, flying on a string above the sand. Because there is no visible water under it and no sense of its real distance, it looks like a full-sized galleon cruising towards the swimmers. The shot was posted on Reddit by bijoubear.
The giant pug. The pug is sitting on a wall close to the camera, while a woman rests on a bench further down the street. With the wall hidden, the dog appears to tower over her. It is a textbook example of the same technique Peter Jackson's crew used to make hobbit actors look tiny next to Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings. Credit: Warmonkeyboom on Reddit.
The UFO on the car door. Dirt and spray on the side of a car have dried into the silhouette of a tree line, and a light fitting reflected in the paint hovers above it like a flying saucer with a beam. It is a happy accident of grime and reflection, posted on Imgur by Saemperson.
Pegasus at the show. This dark horse has a pair of feathered wings painted along its side, so from this angle it looks like the winged horse of Greek myth. Body paint on horses is used at some shows and performances, and the effect here is strong because the wings follow the line of the shoulder. The picture was shared on Twitter by ftcreature.
Landscapes that look impossible
Natural scenes trick us when the usual depth cues disappear. Water, ice and snow have few hard edges, so the brain has to guess.
The underwater waterfall of Mauritius. This aerial view shows the Le Morne Brabant peninsula at the southwestern tip of Mauritius. Sand and silt running off the shelf into deeper water create darker streaks that look like a waterfall plunging into the sea, but the water is not falling anywhere; it is an illusion seen from above. The mountain itself, a 556-metre basalt monolith, is part of a UNESCO World Heritage cultural landscape listed in 2008 for its history as a refuge for people escaping slavery. Credit: jjjjjjjjapie on Reddit.
The road that is a stream. What looks like a leafy footpath lined with stones is a small creek completely carpeted with fallen autumn leaves. The stones are the banks. It is a reminder to be careful on woodland walks in October. Posted by TornadoShanx on Reddit.
The iceberg with a blue stripe. Photographed from a kayak off Newfoundland, this iceberg has a band of clear blue ice running through it. Such stripes usually form when meltwater fills a crack in the glacier and refreezes without air bubbles, so it absorbs red light and looks deep blue. Credit: carriehunt on Reddit.
The Batman iceberg. Seen side-on, this block of ice has the pointed ears and jutting jaw of the masked superhero. Newfoundland's coast, known as Iceberg Alley, sees hundreds of bergs drift past each spring, and locals often give the best-shaped ones nicknames. Posted by eightbitlincoln on Reddit.
The reclining snowbank. Wind has sculpted this bank of snow or ice into smooth curves that many viewers read as a reclining figure. The shapes come from wind erosion and melting, not from anyone's hands. The original Reddit post gave no further credit.
Faces and animals hiding in objects
Seeing faces and creatures in random shapes has a name: pareidolia. Brain-imaging research has found that face-like objects activate the face-processing area of the brain almost as quickly as real faces, within roughly a sixth of a second.
The sweet potato seal. Set on a wooden floor with a pen beside it for scale, this sweet potato has a rounded body, a tapered tail and a little snout, everything a harbour seal needs. Root vegetables grow into odd shapes when they meet stones or crowding in the soil. Credit: Neb519 on Reddit.
The houses with eyes. These narrow, slit-like dormer windows on red-tiled roofs look like half-closed eyes watching each other across the street. The scene appears to be Sibiu in Romania, nicknamed the Town with Eyes because so many of its old houses have these eyebrow dormers. Posted by DeathByTrayItShallBe on Reddit.
The dragon egg. An avocado stone left out in the sun dried and cracked into a dark shell with glowing orange patches, like an egg from a fantasy series. As the seed dries, its thin outer skin splits and pulls back to show the paler tissue beneath. Credit: squishysplits on Reddit.
The happy dog in the table. A dark water stain on an old wooden table has spread into the shape of a dog's head, mouth open and ears back. Water marks spread along the grain and dry from the outside in, which is why their edges are often so crisp. Posted by Sleeveupmyace on Reddit.
The patriotic wine glass. A glass of white wine acts as a lens and projects an image of the American flag hanging in a window behind it. The image appears upside down in the bowl and as a stripe of colour on the table. It is the same optics that make a raindrop on a window show a tiny inverted view of the street. Credit: doublebeatloaf on Reddit.
Animals that blend, merge and pose
Animals confuse us for a different reason. Many have coats designed to break up their outline, and pets sit in places that make them look like furniture.
One animal, not two. This is a single giant anteater. The black and white pattern on its front leg looks so much like a panda's face that many people see two animals. Researchers think the bold stripes help break up the anteater's outline. Giant anteaters live in Central and South America and can flick their long tongue in and out many times a minute while feeding on ants and termites. The photo comes from Wikipedia.
The zoo puzzle. In this enclosure, a long-snouted gharial lies in the water while turtles rest on and around it, and the bodies overlap into one strange creature with too many heads. Gharials are critically endangered fish-eating crocodilians from the rivers of India and Nepal. Posted by _iond_ on Reddit.
The cat that becomes a panda. Curled up on a chair, this black-and-white cat shows only its back and the dark patches on its fur, which form a panda's eyes and ears. Coat patterns like this come from genes that control where pigment cells settle as the kitten develops. Credit: Kbouds on Reddit.
The cross-stitched cats. Two tabby cats pressed against the mesh of a pet carrier look as if they were embroidered on the fabric. The mesh grid works like the canvas of a cross-stitch pattern, breaking the cats into tiny squares. Posted by Bombingofdresden on Reddit.
The dog that looks mounted. Photographed from directly above, this dog's body vanishes behind its fluffy chest, leaving only a head that seems to be fixed to the wall like a trophy. The camera angle removes every cue that would show the body. Credit: tjones26 on Reddit.
The perfect disguise. A Dalmatian standing in a patchy field of snow and earth almost disappears, because its spots match the dark patches of ground. Dalmatian puppies are born pure white and develop their spots over the first weeks of life. The picture was shared by the Twitter account dog_rates.
Patterns made by ice, ink and hair
Ice that looks like cling film. A dish left outside has collected water that froze into a thin, clear sheet with crinkled edges, exactly like a plate wrapped in plastic. Thin ice cracks and buckles in the same way as film when it expands and contracts. Posted by Cog117 on Reddit.
A flock of ice birds. Frost crystals on a windscreen grew into long, winged shapes that look like a flock of birds flying towards a garage door. Frost often grows from tiny scratches or specks of dust, which is why it forms branches and feathers rather than an even layer. Credit: zbeg on Reddit.
The vortex tattoo. Black curved bands on an arm create the illusion of a hole spiralling into the skin. According to the Reddit post, it is an optical-illusion tattoo by artist Paul O'Rourke from 2014. Illusions like this work because our brain reads shading and converging lines as depth. Shared by sleepy_tinkle01.
The Chewbacca hairdo. In this group photo, the long brown hair of a woman standing behind the table lines up with the friends in front so that she looks like the Star Wars Wookiee peering over them. Nobody planned it, which is what makes it so funny. Credit: lolarsystem on Reddit.
Why our eyes fall for these pictures
Three habits of the brain explain almost every image above. First, it estimates size from distance, and when distance cues vanish it simply assumes that things in the same frame are side by side. Second, it is wired to spot faces and animals, because missing a real face was far more costly for our ancestors than seeing a false one. Third, it fills in missing information with the most familiar shape it knows.
A few simple checks help you separate a lucky angle from a doctored image. Look for the horizon and any foreground edges, which reveal where the camera stood. Check whether light and shadows fall the same way on every object. Search for the original post, since many viral pictures, like these, began on Reddit or Twitter with a plain description from the person who took them. And remember that real life is often stranger than editing: none of these photos needed it.
Sources: Photos by BoringEnormous, jjjjjjjjapie, Cog117, Neb519, Wikipedia, DeathByTrayItShallBe, _iond_, bijoubear, Reddit, Warmonkeyboom, squishysplits, sleepy_tinkle01, Saemperson, Kbouds, TornadoShanx, ftcreature, lolarsystem, eightbitlincoln, Bombingofdresden, tjones26, carriehunt, zbeg, doublebeatloaf, Sleeveupmyace and dog_rates. Background: Wikipedia: Pareidolia; Wikipedia: Forced perspective; Wikipedia: Le Morne Brabant; Wikipedia: Sibiu.
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