• Question: Why do optical illusions look like they are moving?

    Asked by (^.w.^)__~ to Jos, Kate, Lisa on 20 Nov 2014.
    • Photo: Joshaniel Cooper

      Joshaniel Cooper answered on 20 Nov 2014:

      Most of them rely on the fact that our eyes can’t see that much at once and constantly move a little bit to look around an image. Certain patterns and colours near eachother can fool our eyes so that when we aren’t looking directly at it they look differet. So the whole thing moves as your eyes move a little bit to see the rest of the pattern.

    • Photo: Kate Dobson

      Kate Dobson answered on 20 Nov 2014:

      I have a squint (my eyes are lined up quite parallel) and although I wear glasses, I still don’t use both eyes at the same time as muh as people with 20:20 vision. This means that I just can’t see some optical illusions, although the motion ones usually affect me.

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