This photograph of a cliff in Southern Iceland (on the island of Heimaey which translates to Home Island) appears to be a giant elephant with its trunk in the water.  Perhaps it is taking a drink?  This “elephant” has become a tourist attraction to this island that claims about 4,500 residents.

View below to see some additional photographs of this unique rock formation.

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Masashi Atarashi, a physics teacher at Aichi Prefectural Gojo Senior High School  in Japan created this video that demonstrates what he calls the “Snow Blind illusion”.  The illusion itself is a very simple one, and you have probably already witnessed this in the past.  Watch how the speed of falling snowflakes appears to be accelerated by the presence of the blinds in the video.

It’s been getting colder here, now I’m actually looking forward to the first snowfall!  This optical illusion is a finalist for the 2015 Best Illusion of the Year Contest.

The flickering circles in this video appear to wander around randomly.  The circles are not moving (just flickering), but the shapes seem to drift whenever you do not look directly at the circles.  You can frame the circles with lines and they will still appear to move.  It is interesting to note that the more circles you add, the more motion is perceived.

This optical illusion was created by Christopher Blair, Lars Strother, and Gideon Caplovitz from the University of Nevada, Reno.  It is a finalist for the 2015 Best Illusion of the Year Contest.

I came across this trompe l’oeil building painting while I was searching around for new illusions a couple of weeks ago.  The mural gives the illusion that a very large ship is passing between two skinny buildings right in the middle of town.  It is very well done and you can tell that it took quite a bit of time and effort to complete just due to the sheer size of the piece.

I’m not sure who the artist behind this mural is, so if you have any additional information, please feel free to add it in the comments section and I will update the post accordingly.  To see some other great trompe l’oeil building paintings, be sure to check out Taylor Hall Mural and Mana Nalu Mural.

With Halloween right around the corner,  why not take some tips from make-up guru Promise Tamang and turn your face into a double face?  Watch this video and I guarantee that you will be completely freaked out with what she finally comes up with.  It is extremely difficult to look at and seems to be very troubling.  She then gets into the car and drives around town freaking out locals who have a hard time figuring out exactly what is going on.

Kokichi Sugihara from Meiji University in Japan created this video of an ambiguous garage roof which completely changes in appearance when its reflection is viewed in a mirror.  Viewed one way, the roof appears to be round while it seems to be corrugated when viewed from the opposite angle.  The actual shape is neither round nor corrugated.  According to Sugihara:

This illusory solid was discovered by combining two observations. One is a mathematical observation that a single image does not covey depth information, and the other is a psychological observation that the human brains like right angles in interpreting an image. Indeed we are apt to interpret the edge curve of the roof as an intersection of a roof with a plane perpendicular to the axis of the roof.

This optical illusion is a finalist for the 2015 Best Illusion of the Year Contest.  What do you think about it?

Urban artists Truly Design was commissioned to paint this anamorphic work in the former Torino Zoo, which is located in downtown Torino, Italy next to the Po River.  The zoo was abandoned in 1987, and as you can imagine, this painting site was quite run down before the Truly Design team went to work.

Here is what the site looked like at the start of the project.

Quite an amazing transformation.  Regarding this work, Truly Design had the following to say:

The message conveyed by this piece is clear enough: time is running out and the Earth, as well as ourselves, needs a rapid change of attitude…. What better place to represent these ideas than a former bear cage in an ex zoo?

Both of these photos were taken by Livio Ninni.

(via Truly Design)