The mossy leaf-tailed gecko, found in Madagascar, hides from predators by blending in seamlessly with its surroundings.  They are nocturnal, so during the day they hide in plain sight but are still extremely difficult to locate.  Can you spot the gecko below?

(via Wikimedia Commons)

Self-taught artist Humberto Machado enjoys working with many types of mediums but finds creating ambiguous drawings to be the most fun and the biggest challenge.  Using negative space in this drawing, he presents both an angry (hungry?) lion and a cheerful monkey swinging from a tree branch that occupy the same space.

One of my personal favorites from Humberto Machado is called Mad or Sad? and features an ambiguous pair of faces occupying the same space.  More of Humberto’s ambiguous drawings can also be found in his latest book from Tate Publishing titled What Do You See?

In another interesting video from Brusspup, he shows us how to create a cool rolling toy using foam rings, a glue gun, and sandpaper.  The toy is based off of a wooden toy originally designed by Peer Clahsen called Sin.  As you can see in the video below, this toy is not difficult to make and the effect that it produces is quite remarkable.

Discussing this video and project on Youtube, Brusspup offered the following:

I added another set of 2 to see what type of effect I could get and I was surprised how cool it turned out. I sprayed the 4 version with UV paint and then used black lights. In the sideways sequence at the end, the illusion is spoiled a bit because you can see the glue. If you use use less glue, the effect would be better.

If you have not already watched Brusspup’s amazing anamorphic illusions video, be sure to check it out.

Mach505 from Truly Design created this anamorphic painting using acrylic and spray paints on the floor and walls of an abandoned school near Torino, Italy.  The painting features an uroboros (an ancient symbol depicting a snake eating its own tail) which symbolizes continuity and represents the cyclical nature of things.

Additional photographs of this painting can be found below.

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Using Legos and two colors of M&Ms, Mary Coffelt, Briena Heller, and Michael McCamy created the following optical illusion at Martinez-Conde and Macknik Laboratories, Barrow Neurological Institute.  The way that the candies are arranged on the checkered Lego pattern, the object appears to bulge even though the surface is flat.  This bulge illusion was originally created by Professor Akiyoshi Kitaoka of Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto, Japan.

(via Scientific American)

Which way is this wheel on this old postcard turning?  Are you sure?  Stare at it for a little while and you might find that the direction the wheel is rotating in will change.

If you stare up at a ceiling fan while it is spinning, you can replicate this strange effect.

(via foto-jennic.com)

Chances are, you see things on a daily basis that resemble other things.  This phenomenon is known as pareidolia and occurs when something meaningful is found in something that otherwise is not very meaningful.  One of the most common occurrences of pareidolia is when inanimate objects (such as clouds, rocks, or buildings) look like faces.  Some scientists believe that our brains are actually hard-wired from birth to identify human faces as a kind of built-in survival mechanism.  Whatever the reason, many of them are quite convincing and highly entertaining.

Continue reading to see nine additional examples of faces found in random places.

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