Althouse: You might have to stare a while, but when the snow leopard pops into view, it's completely clear and so striking!

May 23, 2019

You might have to stare a while, but when the snow leopard pops into view, it's completely clear and so striking!

View this post on Instagram

Art of camouflage...
A post shared by Photographs by Saurabh Desai (@visual_poetries) on Apr 11, 2019 at 5:36am PDT

50 comments:

Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves said...: Kitty.; 5/23/19, 6:46 PM
buwaya said...: The snow leopard won. He got me.; 5/23/19, 6:46 PM
Birches said...: That was neat.; 5/23/19, 6:50 PM
John Borell said...: Don’t see it. Have to admit I got bored after looking for ten seconds; 5/23/19, 6:52 PM
Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves said...: Kitty looks like lichen; 5/23/19, 6:56 PM
tcrosse said...: It's right there next to Trumps high crimes and misdemeanors, visible only to the pure in heart.; 5/23/19, 6:56 PM
madAsHell said...: Oh yeah! I see it. It’s right there!; 5/23/19, 6:57 PM
madAsHell said...: I was looking for a white leopard. It’s at about 8 o’clock from the end of the icicles.; 5/23/19, 7:00 PM
Ann Althouse said...: It's amazing how hard it is to see UNTIL you see it and then how obvious it is. That's the most amusing part.; 5/23/19, 7:00 PM
madAsHell said...: ....and kitty looks pissed!; 5/23/19, 7:01 PM
Curious George said...: Puddy cat!; 5/23/19, 7:05 PM
rcocean said...: Wow, I had look at that for 30 seconds before I saw him.; 5/23/19, 7:17 PM
rcocean said...: He looks more curious than upset.; 5/23/19, 7:19 PM
iowan2 said...: I had to unfocus my eyes. Then I caught the symmetry of the cats eyes; 5/23/19, 7:20 PM
iowan2 said...: uh oh. President Trump just announced he is now going to de-classify intel related to spying on his Presidential campaign.; 5/23/19, 7:22 PM
gspencer said...: A Where's Waldo in the never-ending search for Pussy.; 5/23/19, 7:23 PM
Curious George said...: I saw him inside of five seconds. Just look at the middle of any of these photos, the photog leads you to the subject.; 5/23/19, 7:27 PM
stevew said...: Wow, took me a while.; 5/23/19, 7:30 PM
madAsHell said...: The other really disturbing thing about the photo is the sense of scale. There isn't any!! I wasn't sure what size the cat would be.; 5/23/19, 7:32 PM
whitney said...: For anyone that's frustrated it's teeny. Enlarge the pic and then you can see it; 5/23/19, 7:42 PM
PuertoRicoSpaceport.com said...: I give up. I thought I saw it in the patches of snow but then went to see some pics of what a snow leopard looked like. They aren't white, as I thought.

Went to the photog's website and he has another pic of a snow leopard in front of some brown rock. Not hard to see but still blends in well.

This is like those magic eye photos back in the 80s. I never could see them, either.

I've seen some examples of military camoflage that I had trouble with in real life. They once camoflaged a flock of helocopters on a road I drove down daily and I swore they had moved a whole lot of dirt since the day before. I had to stop and look really close to realize they were helicopters.

Black, unidentified, helicopters. (Well, very, very, dark olive with black numbering that is only apparent in bright sunlight and looking closely.)

John Henry

John Henry; 5/23/19, 7:46 PM
Rory said...: If, like me, you know your eyes will never pick it out, The Sun has an article that blows it up nicely:

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/9028320/can-you-see-hidden-leopard-india/amp/; 5/23/19, 7:48 PM
CWJ said...: Thank you Rory.; 5/23/19, 7:50 PM
readering said...: Yeah, I needed that too.; 5/23/19, 7:55 PM
PuertoRicoSpaceport.com said...: I tried blowing up Ann's copy but it got pixilated. I went to Instagram and it is a bit better but still pixilates. I stared at that for a while and finally saw the face. Still don't see the body.

Mad is right, lack of scale makes it hard. It also looks like the is vertical but I don't think it is.

John Henry; 5/23/19, 7:56 PM
Ingachuck'stoothlessARM said...: looks more like a 'Dirt Leopard'; 5/23/19, 8:17 PM
cf said...: reminds me of this: back in the late 90s or early oughts, there was a family w young kids camping somewhere in Orange County CA whose photo made all the papers. there they are next to the tent all lined up, and back in the line of high grass behind them is the face of a standing cougar, calmly taking it all in. but you only saw it if you looked carefully.
oooohhh-oooh-oooohhhh.; 5/23/19, 8:18 PM
stephen cooper said...: Great picture, although anyone with less than perfect 20/20 vision is not going to pick up on it quickly. Or feel bad that they didn't: even when I saw it I did not think I should have seen it quicker, because my vision is not what it was. Well, I guess as we grow old we need reminders that we were never going to be young forever ......

time has lots of camouflage too, if you are watching an average MLB game tonight you probably will see, either pitching or warming up in the bullpen, or sitting in the dugout ready to hit, or maybe even in the starting lineup, a professional ballplayer who, back in the day, played on the same team, or pitched against, at least one Hall of Famer who, in his turn, had started playing major league baseball 52 years ago .... and that ball player played against guys who were older than some of the guys who stormed the cliffs in Normandy 75 years ago . That is two degrees of separation to an event that will soon be 75 years in the past, and that is not a lot of degrees of separation,

(spoiler alert, printed backwards ....go to the end and read backwards if you care (veterans era WWII more or one with contemporary a as competed who guy a as field same the on played who guy a turn his in was who guy a against or with played Nationals 2011 the facing team a against played or with played who player position any or ,against pitched who pitcher MLB any so Ryan's of teammate a was 2011 until up played who Rodriguez Ivan and ---retired Wilhelm Hoyt before --- games MLB of lots actually--- game MLB an played Ryan Nolan ); 5/23/19, 8:42 PM
AllenS said...: On the right side, underneath the top patch of snow. It's looking right at the camera.; 5/23/19, 8:56 PM
AZ Bob said...: Great post. I learned I need to get eye glasses.; 5/23/19, 9:13 PM
FullMoon said...: On the right side, underneath the top patch of snow. It's looking right at the camera.

Sure, now ,how about the other one?; 5/23/19, 9:14 PM
Seeing Red said...: Silly me I was looking at the white.; 5/23/19, 9:35 PM
Lyle said...: That took me forever.; 5/23/19, 9:39 PM
chuck said...: > Still don't see the body.

I'm thinking the body is hidden. Cats peek around corners and over edges, they are sneaky that way.; 5/23/19, 10:15 PM
Quaestor said...: Wanna know why we can pick out the snow leopard so quickly? (It took me less than a second.)

Pareidolia. The same neuropsychological phenomenon that generally is expressed as a tendency to see faces in abstract patterns, particularly random arrays of dots on a background, gives many people the ability to defeat the leopard's camouflage effortlessly. This may be because our distant hominin ancestors were among the favorite prey of leopard-like cats of the Miocene epoch, just as modern African leopards frequently prey on chimpanzees and bonobos, or would if they were not persecuted to near-extinction in the wild.

If the snow leopard's head had been turned away from the camera the critter's disguise would have been much more impenetrable.; 5/23/19, 10:19 PM
Narr said...: Skipping comments, maybe it's come up--

You know those hidden-dinosaur posters that were so big about 20-25 years ago?

I never could see them either.

Narr
I'll try again; 5/23/19, 10:22 PM
Narr said...: Oh no, the capcha is asking me to find the snow leopards!

Narr
I would be easy meat; 5/23/19, 10:24 PM
HoodlumDoodlum said...: If you can you should check out Big Cat Rescue. They have a snow leopard, it's beautiful!; 5/23/19, 10:26 PM
Gospace said...: Finally spotted it. At once. On a different computer with a different monitor.; 5/24/19, 12:35 AM
Earnest Prole said...: And you won’t believe what happens next.; 5/24/19, 5:11 AM
Mark said...: Immediately spotted the area, but could not see any identifiable body. Finally saw the face, and then realized the body was lying down, not standing.; 5/24/19, 6:44 AM
Mark said...: Had to increase to 400 magnification though.; 5/24/19, 6:45 AM
tim maguire said...: My daughter found it right away. I struggled with the lack of cues for scale--I had no idea how big the leopard might be.; 5/24/19, 7:17 AM
tim maguire said...: When adults who have been blind their whole lives have their sight restored, it still takes years to therapy to be able to see well because the brain needs to be trained in how to identify and classify the information. What we see as clear images, they see as lines and colors (one person in an article I read, even after 18 months, couldn't tell his dog and cat apart without touching them).

This is a similar experience. Once our brains know where the leopard is, it can easily identify which lines are the leopard and which lines are rock and snow. But until it knows, it's all just rock and snow.; 5/24/19, 7:23 AM
Robert Cook said...: I can't see it.; 5/24/19, 9:06 AM
Robert Cook said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 5/24/19, 9:06 AM
John Ray said...: Nice thing about being color blind, camo doesn't work well as nature intended -- for me, it was easy to see.; 5/24/19, 9:16 AM
Narr said...: Not even my bright and shiny morning eyes see the kitty.

Narr
I'm allergic anyway; 5/24/19, 9:20 AM
PM said...: Thanks, Full Moon. Very cool.; 5/24/19, 11:15 AM
Char Char Binks, Esq. said...: I saw it immediately.; 5/24/19, 5:11 PM