Table of Contents

Let's have fun with Dave's face!

Below, an image of Dave will appear. Check it out!

What do you think? Yes, it is upside down but otherwise normal, right? Have a look at this one...

It's upside down but still looks okay even though something has changed. Now we'll show you the two images right-side up so you can compare.

Ughhh! The one on the left looks gross, right?

Why is this? Why did most people not notice it the first time?

Human beings and other living things use visual cues to identify objects and people and to orient them in space. In other words we recognize a cat, for example, because it has pointy ears and whiskers. We can tell which way is up by the way the ears and whiskers match the rest of the visual cues within the scene we are looking at. So if the cat is hanging from the chandelier we can tell that it is in the wrong place. (Try telling that to the cat!) The same is true about Dave's face. We look for eyes and mouth as visual cues to help us recognize a human face. In the case of the image with the inverted eyes and mouth, we could be momentarily fooled since although the photo is upside-down, the eyes and mouth are oriented normally and trick the brain into processing the image as normal.