Here we go again: the image shows a pickup truck driving down a narrow street somewhere in Mexico. Next to it, there is an exact copy. It is the same image, without alterations or changes of angle… but they look different. The copy seems a bit more tilted to the right, and as expected, the Web exploded. What is happening?
The Same Image, Yet Different
And in another episode of "Let's melt brains with optical illusions", we find something... simple. A photograph of a street, two copies, and a detail that is not quite right. The image on the right seems to have been taken from a different angle, although not very pronounced. However, the original description is blunt: They are two copies of the same image. Without adjustments, without Photoshop. With millions of hits and reproductions everywhere, the mysterious Mexican street went viral in a matter of days, to such an extent that it reminds us of the "Great Dress Incident of 2015".
Two Hypotheses
So far two hypotheses have emerged. The first speaks of a variant of the famous "café wall illusion", since our visualization of the diagonals combined with the pattern of the blocks on the street makes the second photo look "tilted" to the right. The second hypothesis appears stronger and suggests an equivalence with the "Leaning Tower Illusion", winner of the Best Illusion of the Year award in 2007. The explanation is that the visual system treats the two images as part of a single scene and calculates that the images "converge" at the bottom, sharing a common origin. The result is an error of interpretation in the angle of one of the images.
https://imgur.com/Etbn4dl
What will be the next illusion that surprises us? Honestly, I have no idea. Every time we think we know our eyes and our minds well, something like this appears and we must start again.
