Optical Illusion

on January 25, 2007

This video shows a pretty amazing optical illusion. When you move around, the dragon's head seems to follow you around the room.

How does it work? If we move around when viewing a solid object, our brain knows how the object we are looking at should behave. However the dragon gives us the wrong clues, because we mis-interpret what its shape is. We assume that the nose of the dragon is pointing out towards us, but in fact the dragon's head is concave.