Here at LittleThings, we absolutely love optical illusions and "trick" photos.
It's always interesting to realize the ways your eyes will confuse your brain — or vice versa! One of my favorites is the Coffer illusion, where you can't quite see the circles among the sunken boxes until someone points them out.
There's also the well-known frog-horse illusion, in which almost everyone can see the frog right away. But it's almost impossible to spot the horse in the same drawing without a bit of help!
A new photo is baffling the internet. It shows a couple on vacation, and at first glance, it just looks like a normal picture of a man and a woman standing next to a tree, enjoying themselves during a trip to a beachside location. But if you look a bit closer, you can see exactly what has everybody so stumped.
Scroll through the photos below to see if you can figure out what's going on in this photo!
Thumbnail Photo: Facebook / The Archbishop of Banterbury
It all started when the Facebook group The Archbishop of Banterbury shared a photo of a vacationing couple on their page.
"I thought she was holding the tree," the page owner captioned the photo.
Sure enough, it really does look like the young woman in the photo has her arm slung around the tree — as if she were casually toting it around with her. Of course, that is impossible.
According to the Daily Star, the couple in the photo is Josh Kelly, a 23-year-old British professional boxer who competed in the welterweight division at the Rio Olympics, and his girlfriend.
The picture was taken while the two were vacationing together in Spain earlier this summer.
The vacation destination looks gorgeous — but more importantly, what the heck is Josh's girlfriend holding in her right arm?
Here's the photo zoomed in a bit. You can see that Josh's girlfriend has something in her arm — and while it definitely looks like it's the tree, logic suggests that she's actually holding something else.
The tree is behind them, perfectly positioned so that the trunk looks like it's resting in the crook of her arm.
But even knowing that the girl can't possibly be holding a tree, no one can quite figure out what it is that she's holding — or how it's making it appear as if she's holding the tree!
Since being posted by The Archbishop of Banterbury, the photo has been shared over 7,000 times and commented on over 8,300 times.
Most commenters generally agree that it's some combination of the girl's hair and a bag she's holding.
But how exactly are her hair and bag perfectly intertwining to make it appear that the tree is in her arm?
Can you figure it out?
People can't stop commenting on this photo as they try to piece it together.
Some commenters are even arguing among themselves about what the "correct" explanation is!
Luckily, Josh has a good sense of humor about the fact that his vacation photo has been circulating thousands of times online.
He originally posted the photo to his Instagram account on August 11, 2017, the day before it was picked up by The Archbishop of Banterbury.
What do you think is going on in this picture?
Please SHARE this optical illusion on Facebook if it's got you stumped — or if you figured it out in a second!
