Photo of world’s richest man Elon Musk photo proves how easily you can be fooled

At first glance you might not spot what’s wrong with the upsidedown image of billionaire Telsa founder Elon Musk.

This bizarre optical illusion is sure to make you look twice.

Upon first glance, you might not spot what’s wrong with the upsidedown image of billionaire Telsa boss Elon Musk.

An unsettling Elon Musk optical illusion reveals how easily our brains can be fooled

However, on closer inspection, you’ll notice that his facial features aren’t quite right, The Sun reports.

Flip the image upside down and you’ll spot that the world’s richest man’s eyes and mouth are actually the right way up.

The photo looks relatively normal when upsidedown.

The brain is not able to spot the small changes when the figure in it is upsidedown but notices right away once it’s flipped 180-degrees.

It’s an illusion that has been around since 1980 when a scientist created what’s thought to be the first iteration.

It was shown in a paper by Peter Thompson, of York University, and featured a doctored image of former UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

The snap of her face was flipped 180-degrees while her eyes and mouth were inverted.

Upsidedown she looked normal, while when upright she looked grotesque.

When you flip the photo over, you can easily see there’s something wrong.

As a result, the illusion is sometimes called the Thatcher Effect.

Plenty of similar images have cropped up in the decades since, each revealing a lot about the way that the brain processes images.

Faces seem unique to us even though they’re all pretty similar, and that’s to do with our cognitive processes.

It’s thought that we develop specific processes to differentiate between faces that rely on the configuration of features – such as the eyes, nose and mouth – as the details of the facial features themselves.

At first glance this photo seems normal.

But when you flip it you realise something is seriously wrong.

As such, we are able to recognise someone’s face when it’s upsidedown even if their eyes and nose have been flipped.

There is evidence that rhesus monkeys and chimpanzees experience the Thatcher effect.

This suggests that our ability to process faces evolved in a common ancestor some 30 million years ago.

To try it for yourself, a website, thatchereffect.com, allows you to give it a go with famous faces – or your own.

The Super illusion brothers

Another stupefying optical illusion that’s worth checking out is this GIF from 2020 dubbed “Super illusion brothers.”

It shows several figures running and jumping off the steps.

But in reality, the figures aren’t moving at all.

スーパー錯視ブラザーズ pic.twitter.com/bLkFhBOCeU

— じゃがりきん (@jagarikin) November 20, 2020

This story was published by The Sun and was reproduced with permission.