RABBIT OR RAVEN? The Latest Optical Illusion To Pit Friend Against Friend
“Yanny” or “Laurel” is so last year.
2019? Well, it’s all about the rabbit. Or the raven.
That’s after this video of someone petting an animal became the latest to send Twitter users down a rabbit hole.
Rabbits love getting stroked on their nose pic.twitter.com/aYOZGAY6kP
— Dan Quintana (@dsquintana) August 18, 2019
A majority of people appear to believe the animal involved is a raven.
But opinion is still split:
Not sure if rubbing left looking rabbit on the nose
or
an upward looking bird on the head (ears=beak) pic.twitter.com/RxTMwWD7za— ꜱᴡᴀᴘɴɪʟ ಠ_ಠ ʙʜᴀᴛɪᴀ (@synbiocs) August 18, 2019
I don’t know... The beak seems too curved for a crow. But if it is, I would definitely love to have a pet crow like that!
— Cristina Zogmaister (@czogmaister) August 18, 2019
This just blew my mind... Is He Petting a Rabbit or a Raven? https://t.co/ZjRcJVIou3
— Scotty K (@ScottyKOnair) August 20, 2019
I don't understand. Is it a rabbit or a raven?!?! pic.twitter.com/R4TEB8Kubo
— Jen (@shoegal4eva) August 20, 2019
Watched this twice to realise it’s a rabbit and no a Raven 😂 https://t.co/yejzqWtHvW
— Aaron Mains (@aaronmains) August 20, 2019
Is that a rabbit being stroked on the nose or a magpie being stroked on the head because... pic.twitter.com/PldtyZRIs9
— Sharky Ballerina🦈 (@CarolHenny) August 19, 2019
That is not a rabbit, it is indeed a Corvid. Notice the nictitating membrane when it blinks. Instead of moving up and down, it sweeps across the eye horizontally like a windscreen wiper and is translucent.
— Greta GG (@GretaGarbolini) August 19, 2019
I did see a raven at first, but it’s definitely a rabbit
— GreenlandRealEstateBroker (@gussthelawyer) August 20, 2019
The answer, however, lies in how the footage went viral.
The video was originally posted to the image-sharing website Imgur by a user called HorseonaBike, who captioned it, “Quoth the Raven ’awwww yissss,’” an apparent reference to a line from the Edgar Allan Poe poem “The Raven.”
Imgur then tweeted the video with the caption: “I think there’s something wrong with your rabbit.”
Dan Quintana, a senior researcher in biological psychiatry at the University of Oslo, echoed the lighthearted rabbit-themed comment when he reshared the clip, prompting the debate that continues to rumble on online.
Quintana told HuffPost on Tuesday that he was compelled to share the video because “the static-bird/rabbit illusion (below) is well-known within psychology and philosophy.”
Like for rabbit
Retweet for duck
What animals do you see it?
#illusion#animals pic.twitter.com/854AE0coRP— Internsheeps (@internsheeps) March 1, 2018
“I thought it was fairly clear that the video was of a bird (unlike the original image, which is designed to be ambiguous), as you can see the translucent nictitating membrane sweep across the eye horizontally (rabbits don’t have membranes like this) and the positioning of the ‘ears’ are a little strange,” Quintana explained.
“Because of this, I made the rabbit comment to prime people into thinking it was actually a rabbit, to give it a fighting chance, so to speak, in this recreation of the original illusion,” he added. “I mentioned the nose in the text of the tweet, as the ‘ears’ and eyes were the giveaways that this rabbit was a bird. When you only see the beak in your peripheral vision, it really seems like they’re ears. Without this misleading cue, I thought most people would have seen a bird.”
Quintana, whose research surrounds “how context and attention can influence what we perceive in the world,” said it was “fascinating to see that priming people with the thought of a rabbit was able to influence some people into actually *seeing* a rabbit (or at least second-guessing what they see).”
“Of course, a tweet like this is among the furthest things from a rigorous laboratory experiment, but it’s still interesting nonetheless,” Quintana added.
This article has been updated to include comments from Quintana.
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This article originally appeared on HuffPost.