Black & White Photo Of Students & Tortoise Stuns Internet As People Saw ‘Color’
By Izza Sofia, 29 Jul 2019

Image via Shutterstock
Social media users were left baffled after seeing this optical illusion.
A photo that went viral on Twitter and first shared on Patreon, showed a group of school girls gathered around a tortoise, donning what seemed to be blue, yellow, red and green colored t-shirts. While the photo appeared innocent, the science behind it will blow you away.
Twitter user Lionel Page revealed that the snap was actually black and white, and it has been filled with grid colors that tricked your brain into “predicting the reality of the photo.” “Only the lines have color,” Page wrote. “What you ‘see’ is what your brain predicts the reality to be.”
The illusion has stunned many Twitter users and has been retweeted over 10,000 times. This isn’t the first mindboggling brainteaser that caught the attention of the internet. Previously, an illusion has left many users thinking they saw a beach with an ocean sky, while others thought they saw a car gate that needed repairing.
This is a black and white photograph. Only the lines have colour.
— Lionel Page (@page_eco) July 27, 2019
What you “see” is what your 🧠 predicts the reality to be, given the imperfect information it gets. pic.twitter.com/gwttlcC2Zw
original image: https://t.co/b8bSpV5zb7 processing in GIMP: https://t.co/AC7nGT4MfX
— Chris Campbell (@CSJCampbell) July 27, 2019
Another one, with horizontal lines instead of a grid. pic.twitter.com/sNKSBBkkqT
— ̐🐿ṕ̒ͪͬͯ̐̐̐̐̐̚ȉ̓̈̅̄̓̀p͒̍̚p̏͗̊̔͒̐̐í͆͆̓ͮ̔ͮ͆n̒͐̀͆ (@hodefoting) July 25, 2019
I did. It checks out. I don’t think you looked closely at all. pic.twitter.com/ZaaeDr3XJp
— 𝐹𝓇𝑒𝒶𝓀𝓎 𝒢𝑒𝑒𝓀𝓎 🤓 (@Freak0nline) July 29, 2019
I see the red lines very obvious and clearly even in the small photo, the blue less so and green and skin not at all...
— Bernard Marantelli (@BernardColossus) July 27, 2019
Large photo - see them all - Skin gone least obvious.
Note: on Color vision tests - I see both number variants clearly
The first time I saw this I was gobsmacked. I saw everything in colour. I come back a day later and I see a black and white photo covered in coloured lines. I guess my brain must have processed the information overnight.
— Leighton V_Williams (@LeightonVW) July 28, 2019
Why do u have to fuck with my mind on a Saturday evening 🤦🏾♂️ pic.twitter.com/vgbhQFtKjA
— rahul (@unrahu1) July 28, 2019
[via News.com.au, opening image via Shutterstock]