Xanthippa's Chamberpot

Our mind is always processing ‘stuff’ around us.  And it is relatively easy for our mind trick us into perceiving things that are not there, or into not perceiving things that are there.  And so on….

This is such a fascinating subject!  What is it about our minds that allows this trickery to go on?  Many people have been asking this – Scientific American addresses it in ‘The Neuroscience of Illusion’.

Yes, true, this is looking at optical illusions only, but, well, that is the first step!  And some of these illusions are pretty neat! (If you want to skip the article, here is a link for the 5 illusions themselves).  And here is a whole gallery of them!

And, in my never-humble-way, here, for your enjoyment, is an optical illusion that I think is my own (though, with the mind playing tricks like this, I might have seen it somewhere, and then just been tricked into thinking I thought of it…) 

Because it is in a tree, it is ‘obvious’ (hopefully) that this is a picture of a bird.  Well, two birds – but not at once.  One is a big bird, one is a little bird.

Which one did you see first?