The illusory cow

Richard Wiseman found a cow that may have a vase on its face. Or ... maybe ... it has two faces on its face. Is your mind blown yet?

Via Dimitrios Diamantaras

Maggie Koerth-Baker is the science editor at BoingBoing.net. She writes a monthly column for The New York Times Magazine and is the author of Before the Lights Go Out, a book about electricity, infrastructure, and the future of energy. You can find Maggie on Twitter and Facebook.

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MORE: brain • cow • illusions • LOLnimal • optical illusion • Weird

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Jacob Ewing

Definitely faces – that’d be one seriously mashed up vase.
http://twitter.com/_omitsu Hayley Sanderson

Looks like it was made for an illusion themed contest at worth1000:
http://www.worth1000.com/entries/374013/cow

Possibly the original image:
http://www.sxc.hu/pic/m/r/re/remind/306545_dutch_cows_1.jpg
- Brainspore
  
  Naw, couldn’t be. The image from the contest has a “worth1000″ watermark in the lower left corner. You couldn’t cover up something like that unless you were well-versed in the art of digital manipu— ooohhh.
- Cowicide
  
  Actually…. it’s turned out the so-called “original image” you show was photoshopped and is not the original image.
  
  The illusory cow image is real and is the original image. Someone edited that so-called “original” photo to look like a normal cow. The illusory cow image doesn’t have these editing artifacts and is real.
  
  Look closer where I’ve highlighted the obvious flaws in this fake “original image” you show. There’s obvious traces of cloning with the Photoshop rubber stamp tool when you blow up the image and look closer (click on the blue link where it says “Original” to see the larger blown-up picture so you can clearly see what I’m showing):
  
  http://i.imgur.com/APdvv.jpg
  - Antinous / Moderator
    
    Is that what those are? I need to have a serious talk with my plastic surgeon.
tolstoy

Steve Jobs has come back as a cow… with a mate?!
Guido

In the future we will understand the way we can control pigmentation at a fine level and we will grow patterned fur in vats. Turing Patterns + Morphogenesis + In vitro culture = AWESOME
- GyroMagician
  
  Grow patterned fur in vats…I want more. I want my xPhone (everything in the future starts with x) to display my xbooks on the side of any convenient cow. And maybe vids from xTube too, although that may be further into the future.
Mark Dow

Cross-eyed cow.
Lobster

They better make it into double cheeseburgers.
Rossi

Reminds me of the Electric Company feature in which parts of words come out of the mouths of silhouettes to form full words.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INL6hc9yEow
- Felton / Moderator
  
  My thought exactly.
EvilSpirit

The cow’s enormous head is also affixed to a teenie-tiny little cow body.
Kapuhi

No, because shopped. http://www.sxc.hu/pic/m/r/re/remind/306545_dutch_cows_1.jpg
- Kapuhi
  
  Dang.. repeating what Hayley said.. sorry.
scatterfingers

I freaking love this cow.
Graysmith

I was going to say it looks waaaay too perfect to be real, but others have already proven it as a fake. Good job, internet!
ROSSINDETROIT

Damn aliens been messin’ with the livestock again, dad!
Palomino

Rorschach Rosie
Shibi_SF

Someone photoshopped Nicolas Cage’s profile onto a cow?!
http://brykmantra.com checkersspeech

Well dang, I was going to say that it could have easily been photoshopped, and shouldn’t be immediately believed by the author of this post, but others proved it conclusively. Oh well, as long as somebody brought it up, that’s good enough.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_N6NPVS3T6J2644SF4RCUQLKOZY Alex

Rather than poorly argue editting artifacts, I just recognise what a cow is meant to look like in regard to fur etc.
There are some poor versions that fool nobody but the picture showing the faces is false. Hayley Sanderson Today 08:33 AM did at least reference a picture that is real. Check it out and you should appreciate the little details that just look right.
- Cowicide
  
  Especially look at the top-left red circle that highlights the white part of the fur. Click on “Original” so you see it at high resolution. Are you trying to tell me those repeating patterns are natural?
  
  Obvious photoshop is obvious. That original is not an original. The original is the cow with the faces and someone photoshopped that out to make it look like that’s the original but it’s not.
  
  ARE YOU BLIND?
  
  I can tell by the pixels and I’ve seen alot of photoshops in my day.
  - Nathaniel
    
    I’m suspicious. The “original” image you show is clearly ‘shopped, but it’s a higher resolution image than the thumbnail “original” that others have linked to, and the cow’s face doesn’t have quite the same patterning. So there’s either two faked “originals”, or someone ‘shopped a stock image from http://www.sxc.hu to look like it had the two face illusion (and did a rather good job of it), and then someone ‘shopped it back into an obviously fake “original”.
    - Cowicide
      
      The “original” image you show is clearly ‘shopped, but it’s a higher resolution image than the thumbnail “original” that others have linked to
      
      It’s not higher resolution, it was just resampled with interpolation so it could be enlarged to make it easier to view the fraud of the so-called “original” photo than wasn’t original because it was a fake of the original in order to trick people into thinking the real original was fake. But it wasn’t fake, the so-called fake original was the real original and the new fake original wasn’t original at all.
      
      Jesus Christ, next thing you’ll tell me is long horse isn’t real. When the facts clearly show the long horse in history books and fossils.
pjcamp

Doesn’t it have three faces?
woid

There is no vase. There are no faces. There is no cow. There are no other cows. There is no wall. There is no field. There is no sky. All is Photoshop.
http://twitter.com/lsmntr Luis Montero

It’s got three faces.