50 Unedited Photos So Confusing They Don’t Look Real (New Pics)

Our brains and eyes work together to help us perceive the world around us. For them both to work fast and effectively, the brain develops shortcuts to process the vast amount of data seamlessly and unconsciously. 

However, sometimes the view we see, like the photos on this list, can throw a wrench into this smooth process. Optical illusions confuse the brain and can create a mismatch between what is real and what is not.

Alternating patterns, brightness, tilt, or particular colors can affect our eyes, making them see optical illusions. Continuous exposure to certain colors, patterns, and amounts of brightness can tire our eyes, which also causes us to perceive things differently.

Curious about this, people have tried to create man-made optical illusions that take advantage of things that affect our sight and brain processing.

The exploration of illusions goes way back, as far as the ancient Greeks, but the real boom in studying it began in the 19th century. Scientists who researched perception created simple illusions to show how the brain perceives patterns and shapes, which started the early theories of how our eyes can play tricks on our brains.

The Ebbinghaus illusion, for example, demonstrates how our mind makes judgments about size when objects are close to each other. In this picture, you can see two orange circles. At first glance, it may seem that they’re of different sizes, but actually, they’re the same size. This shows that our brain doesn’t judge size in isolation but rather in relation to surrounding objects.

The Ponzo illusion also proved that the surrounding context is important for depth perception. This picture shows how the same-length lines can appear to be different lengths when placed between converging parallel lines. If you block out the lines on the side with your fingers, you can see that the lines are actually the same size. Talk about confusing the brain.

Later, many other illusions involving lines appeared. One of them is the Helmholtz illusion, which we now use as solid fashion advice. Its creator noticed that a square filled with horizontal lines appears taller and thinner, while an identical square with vertical stripes appears shorter and wider.

That’s why wearing vertical stripes makes the wearer appear taller and slimmer, something that fashion gurus often advise paying attention to when shopping for clothes with stripes. Why this is, researchers are still unsure about.

During the 20th century, scientists continued to research how our perception works, with David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel discovering that some neurons in the brain perceive different-shaped objects, which earned them a Nobel Prize in 1981. Then the artists experimented with illusions for some time, creating pieces worth studying.

Then, fast forward to the 21st century; technological advancements allowed scientists to look into optical illusions more in-depth. With functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), researchers can now analyze how the neurons in our brain respond to individual illusions. What’s interesting is that new illusions are appearing all the time, and even a competition for the best ones is held every year.

Last year (2024), the winner was The Static Spin, which includes a gray picture of a ballerina. The way it's portrayed makes it seem like she's spinning without anything actually moving. It’s a variation of an older illusion, where motion is seen without anything making a move.

Even though our brain is powerful, all these illusions show that it’s still too limited to process all the visual information our eyes need to take in. So our mind takes shortcuts, which brings us to our initial point that seeing doesn’t always mean that we should believe it.