Probably all of you saw this picture at some point of your life. Titled the “Afghan Girl”, this photo was named the most recognized photograph in the history of National Geographic. Although girl’s name was not known, her picture appeared on the June 1985 cover of the magazine. The image of her face, with a red scarf draped loosely over her head and with her piercing sea-green eyes staring directly into the camera, became a symbol both of the 1980s Afghan conflict and of the refugee situation worldwide. Gula was known throughout the world simply as the Afghan Girl until she was formally identified in early 2002.
Over time, many variations of Steve McCurry’s original photo appeared. At some point even in optical illusion form, as we see below. All I could find about this illusion, is that people can’t seem to look at it for too long. Apparently you get a headache, or become nervous at best. Maybe this isn’t the true nature of this illusion, but it just didn’t make me hallucinate like some other animations did. Wait few seconds for the animation to load (it’s 1MB big), and share your experience afterward.
god, thats quite creepy.. (first comment?)
That’s really pretty freaky. It looked like the girl was moving!
Wow! Hypnotist not needed! Excellent illusion!
It gives me a headache
My eye was drawn to one of her eyes until I couldn’t look anymore, then my eye was drawn to the other eye until I couldn’t look any more, back and forth.
Ummm….yeah. There’s really no illusion. It’s just two rotating circle patterns originating from her eyes. One draws in, the other flows out. No illusion here at all. Just animation added to a picture. Not impressed. Love your site however, they can’t all be winners I guess. lol
I would guess the illusion, or trick would be, that you are unable to stare at one eye all the time. My eyes kept asking to look at the other eye as the one I focussed on.
I think the original picture was more captivating. But this one, it looks like the girl is expanding slightly at the edges if you stare at the center
not entirely sure WHAT exactly the concentric circles are meant to do though….
Its kinda like the hollow Einstein head take it always looking at you
For some reason i saw her grow a mustach, turn into a man and start nagging to me about the dolphins game this sunday… True. I must of ben worried about my french exam tomorrow so i just thought about the dolphins… Next thing you know a man appears and naggs about them… creapy
all i could say is, that the girl’s face disappeared.
Yop freaky, seems like her left eye is an inward vortex and the right eye, an outward one!
It slowly moves 2wards you! And it did give me a little bit of a headache.
Wouldn’t call this an illusion. Just an annoying animation.
If you look at the center of the picture, you see that is moves very slowly to the right!!!
:O
Her right eye looks like it’s getting larger and her left eye looks like it’s getting smaller. And, yeah, I can’t look at this for too long cuz it’s creepy.
After a while of staring, I saw a third circle radiating from the center of her forehead. Didn’t see it with my reading glasses on, but without them, I could.
when you stare at her left eye for a minute or so, her head appears to nod… cool pic
It looked like waves were going toward the center of her left eye (right-hand side) and waves radiating out of her right eye (left-hand side) Very hypnotizing! It makes my eyes tired.
That’s scary!
It just hurt my eyes – sorry didn’t see anything moving but the circles.
If you look at it long enough ,assumung you can, then the pupils of her eyes eventually start to flash red. Not sure if this is menat to be the illusion or not.
creepy, but somehow I think it would be more hypnotic if the circles went the same way, not one shrinking and the other growing.
it seems like to me that the girl appears to grow or move if you stare at the eyes…maybe thats just me.
I could watch it for hours, I don’t feel bad at all. Also I don’t get how this is an optical illusion.
Try it with the old Red/Blue 3D Glasses!
wow! how did they do it? looks like the movement comes the left eye then spaghettified to the right eye!!!
after staring at an eye, the whole picture turns red and it looks like the devil’s looking at you. i stopped looking at it before it could “transform” into the devil because i got too scared :P
There is a third circle, emanating from the middle of her forehead. Still this is no illusion. Not creepy either, just useless.
lol i can stare at her forever ;) seriously its pretty easy to keep staring at her
Its creepy. I have to pee now
weird! but cool
When I look at it blankly it seems like her head gets larger and larger and it creeps me out. at first I thought it was going to turn into a screamer but then I realized I was only imagining the growing head, then I thought i was going to scream :P
Well there are 3 spinning circles for sure, but strangly there is 4 colors green, red, pink, and blue the blue best show in the bottem right hand corner, there may be a 4th circle but as of yet i can not pin point it. looking at the origanal picture the only point of this illusion seems to be to obscure every thi8ng but her piercing green eyes to do this you must do what i call ing blurring your vision, if you do nto look directly at the picture and let your eye lose focus you’ll notice that the eye become a lime peircing green the seem to burn thru your soul. this seem to be the only point of this illusion is to being out the piercing color of her eye in which she was known for.
Wow that was frightening. She looked like she was getting larger.
Adobe Flash is much faster than this animated image.
What gives the volume menu permission to pop up out of nowhere? Sorry, but I am aggravated at my computer right now for being a slow idiot (1GB RAM for anyone who cares).
This is, how do you say it…, fail? Its a .gif file, its an animation, not an illusion. Its as much of an optical illusion as Optimus Prime in a Michael Bay movie.
Gah, my head…. DX
cool! One of my eyes wants to focus FAR and the otehr one tries to focus NEAR. I can see why it would give one a headache after a while.
ALL HAIL HYPNO-AFGHAN GIRL…
If you stare at the picture for 5 minutes she steps aside and a bunch of taliban jumps out of the screen into your room starting to torture you… Fortunately I have no time to stare 5 minutes at this crappy picture
However, the woman represents how terrible Afgan people have suffered from wars and wars….
I wish she and her people have peace and order soon.
Best wishes.
Love this site.
The Afghan girl moves!
her left eye(our right) looks like the circles are moving out but the right eye looks like the circles are going in
that is very weird but when your eyes start to go bleary you can only see the afghan girl and the black lines and faker very funny comment :D
GOT IT ! the illusion is trying to make you think its moving to the right but actually it’s the circles spinning around.
What is she on and where can I get some?
If I just stare at the eye on the left, the picture changes – the details of her face disappear and re-appear. Sometimes I thought she looked like an alien, then all I’d see was the circles, then Afghan girl would re-appear. Didn’t get a headache though.
Fake !!! Gif Animation
It’s ok to look at…..but then, if you add a couple bong hits….whooaa, NOW we’re talking, ha!
From staring at the picture for quite awhile, the circular patterns are expanding from her right eye and contracting into her left eye (not as your face her but her actual eyes)… I stared at the space directly between her eyes.
Actually there was a follow up on the “Afghan Girl” http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/03/0311_020312_sharbat.html
So sad.
The concentric circles do make the photo seem to move.
Stare at me…. Nothing than a pretty girl. No wait… She´s a devil… No, an angel… I can´t say…
Just Bullshit.
On her forehead, there is another expanding circular wave pattern, is that intentional or illusion?
A definite illusions, though, are the straight lines radiating out from the centre of her face.
Wowa, that gives me a headache! Ouch
Pretty cool. But it didn’t give me a headache.
I tried to stare at it but its actually quite a scary picture so it was difficult to stare at anyway. haha.
If I stare at her right eye, the left side of her face starts to move, then she looks like a man…and my head hurts…
wierd!!
is it really just a picture? ic ould seriously swear that the circles are moving (outward on the right eye and inward on teh left eye)
her face looks like it gets bigger as you stare at it
I didn’t notice much except that the circles seem to come at you from her right eye and going into her left eye. The second time at a quick glance i noticed there was another set of circles coming from a different spot rather than just her eyes. I thought it was a rather interesting position and it’s very feint. I thought the whole image overall was rather creepy. Gave me goosebumps.
If you stare at the picture long enough she stands up and undresses!
Bullshit!
There’s that third circular pattern in her forehead, you can’t see it from far but if you go close enough, it becomes visible.
i almost saw multiple faces in just a few seconds =)
it looks quite hynotic but other then that it’s not very illusiony.
YAH IF U STARE A THE LEFT SIDE SHE LOOK LIKE A MEXICAN MAN WIT A MUSTACHE
Um… how is this an optical illusion?
It’s an animated gif. There is no illusion.
For reference, look at the smaller picture above. It’s not an animated gif, just a jpg, and nothing happens.
freeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeky look in her eyes and the circles seem to shake
scary for sure!!!!!!!!!!!!!
If u use a open glare, and watch through the pic, the left eye seam to get bigger end the right one’s getting smaller.
well me and my bud here stared at it for a good 5 minutes, nothing happend, in fact both of us grew board, my bud however said her face appeared to grow and shirnk a little but i didnt see it happening.
After something like 20 or 30 seconds, my heart accelerates, yeah, I am more stressed. For sure, it is a strange optical illusion!
That gave me a headache.
It doesn’t count as an optical illusion if it’s animated. This is a real one: http://www.uncoached.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/optical_illusions_8.jpg
If you save the pic to your computer, you’ll notice the image is a GIF. Its not an optical illusion because the lines ARE actually moving!!
It’s relaxing! Ahh…
The illusion appears after you look away from the image. The afterimage makes the surface you view (say, the back of your hand) appear undulating and distorted.
she’s all like
O_o
Whooow ! It look like the picture is a sort of animation, and it look like the circles are moving ! Trully a great optical illusion.
that gave me a bad case of motion sickness.
I Feel uneasy looking at the Picture!
This is not an optical illusion. It is animated.
I took a screen shot to check, put it in Photoshop to see the still image and nothing.
This is a farce.
Image properties
Location https://www.moillusions.com/ …
Type: GIF image (animated, 10 frames)
Image dimensions: 450px × 390px (scaled to 590px × 511px)
Sixe of file: 1079.76 KB (1105670 bytes)
Alternate text: Afghan Girl Optical Illusion
Not really a optical illusion… Just an 10 frame animation!
She is too beautiful to be used in a fake optical illusion!
It is nice as an animated picture, but its not a optical illusion!
there’s also another spiral coming out of her forehead.
her eyes get bigger and her face gets smaller. it didnt give me a headache though. her face was pretty scary.
jackie chan
the reason people become nervous is that the eyes seem to widen and as they are looking directly at you, the subconscious says that the eyes are searching for something in you
If you squint your eyes, you can see the original picture. She is quite beautiful, even with her strange eyes. That’s the illusion I got out of it. :D
She turned into Elijah Wood for me.
I’m scared.
I don’t get it… so the circles go in and out, its not really doing anything to me…
kurt is probably high. All I could see after a few seconds was her eyes, but as rachel said, if you squint your eyes you can see the girl in her radiant beauty. She is very pretty. I didn’t get a headache, though. For those who did, the placebo effect worked on you. Weaklings.
..oooooooooooohhhhhhh…so scary the first time i looked….
if you blurr your eyes you can see a paki man with a mustache
Does the 3rd source of illusion really exist?
The first thing i saw was the two source coming right from her eyes
But as i look away, near her forehead, there’s a slight illusion of the 3rd source. Then it faded away.
Am i imagining things? :(
I got pity on this girl, she has a serious expression but not that scarry, ic ould seriously swear that the circles are moving (outward on the right eye and inward on teh left eye)i can see a third circle too on her forehead,her right eye is staring at me when i say, its a spirit which is searching for something …..?she is beautiful, has a look of question mark…?
I save it as my back ground and it dont do nothing but its my favorite photo of all time so i will keep it.
Thats kinda weird but it only makes my eyes go crossed and its animatated so it really SUCKS!!!
It Kinda Makes My Stomach Feel Queasy And I Get Nervous Just Looking At It…
When I look at her face near the center, it makes my eyes refocus at specific intervals. After about 30 seconds of this I realized my head was starting to hurt from trying to focus so many times.
After a few seconds the face appears to drift to the left, and the right side of her mouth distorts, Then I am seeing her face without the hood, and she suddenly looks a lot older. :-)
Nausea, vomiting, disorientation. Oh, was I supposed to comment on the illusion or the war?
I found myself watching the lines, no matter how hard I tried to stay staring at the eyes.
After 30 seconds or so, her eyes become wider, then she starts looking like a demon.
Lol you guys it’s a .gif
The circles look like they’re moving because they ARE.
no optical illusion here the page is moving the lines push esc or stop on your toolbar and they will stop moving
fail optical illusion
Just a pretty girl, with moving circles . . . er thats all.
it looks to me like she gets closer to you the longer you look at it. she’s also freaky looking.
I dunno, to me it looks like she is starting to age. This is likely due to the lines though. Also, damn this headache.
This is a stupid elusion designed to confuse the mind by going in reverse order of nature, so the brain is very confused.
It is a little hard to focus on one point in the image because of the moving lines. Other than that it’s not really special
Do you know this afghan girl was again found by national seograpic team after 15 years now she is woman
i dont see nothing
animation, not illusion
this is a fake
i copied the image to microsoft word and it didn’t work
there is an intersection point where her third eye would be, about 1/3 up the centre of her forehead, it ripples like a stone dropped in a pond, but instead of distorting the other ripples it creates its own.
nothing happened. I tried to look at eyes, i tried to look at lines and at her 3rd eye. Bullshit.
Actually nice young a bit scared lady.
There is a difference between op art and illusion. This is op art. You see a bit of a moire pattern of one set of circles going smaller and the other larger, giving the perspective of exiting and entering a tunnel, because that is indeed what the circles or doing. You see a third set of concentric circles created by the interference pattern.
It does not affect perception of the underlying image in anyway. No afterimage effect or odd movement.
this is really awesome.
Nothing after a couple of minutes, though I can see how I could get a headache or feel nauseous if I did it for longer. Say like 10 minutes or so.
I looked into her eyes and lost focus and the GIF stopped moving. The picture stood still. after a little distraction it started swirling again. I looked at it and my head hurt.
wtf…….only multiple pics make moving in cycle every 2sec…. u cant focus on circulating moving pics at one point..thats simple…. why the hell u try to focus on her?????????????????/
wow, it makes me feel really uncomfortable, being watched right back at me
I didn’t feel anything….
I agree with LT1085.
When i stare at the image the two obvious ripples intersect on her forehead and create a new one flowing outwards,
Is it just me, or does this chick kinda look like the Olsen twins? Kinda creepy.
after 10 seconds my eyes acually started to water
Nothing happened.
The more I stared, my eyes started to cross. And when that happened, I focused more on the face behind the ripples, and her eyes stared to make me nervous.
this made me do nothing.. i just wasted 2 min looking at it
It actually made me twitch and have to look away.
she is so scared
I felt genuinely nauseas
Glory to the hypnotoad.
More of an annoyance than anything. Are you sure you know what “optical illusion” means?
This isn’t an illusion, it’s an animation in a non-still image file format. Look up the meaning of a fucking “illusion” before you make an article about it
I found it hard to look at. It was as though my eyes started to hurt from focusing on her.
She’s still beautiful.
i started to see some waves coming from her third eye
The right eye becomes bigger and bigger while the left one becomes smaller and smaller.
pathan roxx every where
i cried lol my eyes watered when i focused on her eyes.
ALL HAIL THE HYPNOTOAD!
It most certainly did not give me a headache. It most certainly did not make me hallucinate. So why did I stop staring at it after only a ten second period? I got bored! :) Cool looking nonetheless.
Calling this an optical illusion is a misnomer, since there is nothing illusory about this. It’s just unpleasant to look at for very long.
AH that is no illusion! that is animation
Fake! Press ESC button..to stop the circles from spinning
It is not a photo with circles on it. It actually is an illusion. There is no photography, the circles in different colours interfering with each other create the image of the girl’s face.
Sorry, but is a .gif animation, no a jpg photo!
LOL to me it just looks like she’s gone crazy and trying to do some creeeeepy mind control thing… all like “look into my eyes, you will now be my zombie slave!” LOL, her eyes were all like swirly and crazy-looking coz of the spinning lines
she is innocent but in this gif photo, she is horrible
after about 30 seconds my eyes started to feel kinda weird and after about a min or so my head started hurting but I wanted to see how long i could look at it. after about 3min i broke into a sweat and started feeling nauseous. I couldn’t stop throwing up for about 30min, ended up puking up a lot of bile and straining so hard my throat started bleeding and i think i may have a hernia.
Pf, nothing, but creepy!
It didnt bother me at first, but after 30 seconds I felt a stir in my pants, and then @ just after the 1 minute mark i simultaneously soiled myself and ejaculated. I still feel weird from it – and nearly 30 minutes have gone by!
just made my eyes water, got really hot and made them hurt.
This isn’t an optical illusion. This is just a trippy GIF.
yeah, not an illusion.
now the voices in my head are telling me to KILL
Anyone else notice the third eye (pineal) circle generator? Uhh.. the spot on her forehead.
did noting to me…
dumb. theres nothing wrong with the pic of the girl. its the twirling lines that trigger the nauseous reaction.
Nothing wierd, stared at it for five minutes with no bi-effects except somewhat hurting eyes(not uncommon after staring at a screen 15 cm away for five minutes).
i felt nothing
i did nothing to me.
If you look at her right eye, and keep looking, her head will start bulging and her eyes become piercing… Like a demon… Really scary.
I think it’s the way the illusion makes her eyes look…somewhat possessed.
got me going
there is a third, pink set of rings in her fore head
There’s nothing wrong with this picture and there is nothing wrong with the girl. The lines in the .gif may trigger a motion-sickness-like feeling, but hey, if you don’t like the headaches or nausea, don’t look at it.
I liked the illusion, personally.
Oh my God,come on guys what hapend to you peopl, there is nothing in the pic, only the one who uploaded the pic, he or she put some graphs on her face, thats hypnotic graphics nothing els. make the same graphs on white paper your head will hurt soon..
cheerz
she disappeared…
its clearly mostly to do with the fact that you are thinking the illusion will do weird things to you. your mind then makes it so. i knew it wasnt real and stared at it for well over 5 minutes and nothing happened. if someone told you a sugar pill was a drug that would make you vommit, then you would probably end up throwing up.
(shudders)
this is creepy
I looked at this image for a bit, and no headache. Then i got the “bright idea” to try something: to look at it in 3D. allow me a rather lengthy explanation. If you have ever learned to see the “Magic Eye” type of picture in 3D, you can also train yourself to see almost any repetative pattern the same way (It;s all in the focus) stereoscope photos, even fabric or wallpaper patterns. with that in mind, I opened another browser window and copied and pasted the address to get a second instance of the image open. Then I put them side by side and started crossing my eyes…soon I could see her in 3D. NOW I have a headache!
actually if you stare in some point for long enought, the moving line will seem to stop. that’s the illusion… i guess.
it makes it easier if you look in the eye
The nausea is a result of your own rapid eye movement from one of her eyes to the other and constant involuntary focusing. This rapid movement and focusing can also raise your heart rate.
wow its hard to look away from it. If you stair at it to long it hurts your brain and eyes. But that might be just me XD
The illusion I am guessing is the ‘third swirl’ that appears in the middle of her forehead. It’s seen as a ‘third eye’ because of the two swirls out of her eyes… but if you follow this swirl out you notice it disappearing as it goes out… and the swirling does really mess with you if you stare at it too long… not a good image imo.
well, i saw something else than the girl, i watched it for about 15-20 seconds but the shape and look of her face changed and i got freaked out
The feelings are caused by the alternating movement of the rings. One set is going out from the eye (the left) and the other set (the right) is going towards the eye. The alternating motion probably causes a form of seasickness? My opinionon, no science to verify. lol
Zahirah says:
February 2, 2010 at 10:08 pm
“If you look at her right eye, and keep looking, her head will start bulging and her eyes become piercing… Like a demon… Really scary.”
Agree Zahirah
I stared at the left eye ( dont look away 1-2 minutes) just concentrate long enough the detail goes in the face and then it warps and bulges but the eyes remain clear…. pretty freaky shit…….
Okay I’m scared…
ooh aaaaaaaaaaah! shes controlling me! aaaaaaaaah! :p
This is some swirly lines over a photo of a girl’s face.
To me, her skin turns a weird, pinky-purpley color if you look directly at the eyes and see it in your peripheral vision
I just came.
lol when i stare at her eyes it seems like she get older and older
its fake!!!
copy nd paste somewhere u’ll see. there’s no illusion there
An animated .gif file comprises a number of images or frames to be displayed successively.
Like movie.
Not optical ilusion.
This image have 10 frames.
this is……..
is she mad?
WHAT DO U WISH ME TO DO MASTER?! lol very coool
I’ve done acid, this isn’t new to me.
it made me sleepy.. i’m literally gonna go to bed now.. & bookmark this to help me go to sleep in the futre
You don’t know what an optical illusion is.
I looked at it for 5 min and her face started to change, she got older then fatter then she looked more like a boy and it just kept changing. Cool!
She’s freaking me out – it’s like she’s gonna come out of the damn screen and murder me. |:
What does it expected to do to you ? I did not feel or see anything.
One eye eats you, the other eye spits you out.
She is the natures mistake creation. Her eyes are really unique and everyone doesnt have capacity to keep watching. Recently another girl in South Afghanistan has been found with even exceptional eyes. her age is 12 but she is said to have most beautiful eyes in the world
Look up ,
that is NOT a damn optical illusion douchebags
its a moving gif image
I dunno if it’d fall into the optical illusion category, but it does appear as though her head is moving.
Mcury..she is not a mistake creation you racist twat…you are the mistake.
Its a GIF animated in 3 frames
Yeah! When I saw my first moving GIF in the 90s, I was excited.
So where is the optical illusion Shit.
I want my time back!
It’s a gif, not an optical illusion.
ALL GLORY TO THE HYPNOGIRL!
My eyes sting!
ALL GLORY TO THE HYPNOGIRL!
I now see the light, dark lord…compel me to do thy bidding!!!
WHAT DOES IT MEAN IF YOU SEE A DEMON STANDING OVER A POOL OF BLOOD WHEN YOU STARE AT THIS?
anyone else notice the third eye on her forehead? its a pink circle that extends outword. subtle.
Nothing.
Rumor has it the Pentagon shooter was staring at this image for about an hour before he went crazy.
Wao! yea! ALL GLORY TO THE HYPNOGIRL!
after I stop watching the illusion effect look at her eyes and there was her cute ayes!
I looked at it for a few seconds, then it turned into Michael Jackson. Talk about blowing my mind.
OMG. Look at her left eye. Concentrate on it. It will seam like she’s geting biger/or closer if you like ;)
Hmmmmmmm!…must…drink…beeeeeeer!!!
she looks like Madonna
This IS NOT an illusion!!
Duhh…
It is an animated GIF file!
Thanx but no thanx.
this is retarded.. all i saw was circles moving around in her face.. stared for 20 min as i thought i would see anything.. all that happend was more circles.. bullshit HOW THE HELL can you get insane by this shat?
The only thing i see is what “Smile” said he saw: some moving circles creating some “deepness” into and out of each eye like a stone into a pond creating tiny waves. I’m not sure of what should happen coz i jumped to img without reading the text. Against most comments I liked the effect thi i’m tired of the girl image already over the years.. Cheerios everyone.
The only thing that happens if you stare at this for too long, is that you get bored. Is that the trick of it? If it is, it works really well.
HERE’S THE OPTICAL ILLUSION:
This depends on how you focus. If you’re like me and know how *not* to focus on something, you won’t see anything.
Let your eyes focus as if you’re focusing beyond the screen. In the middle of her forehead you’ll see a subtle, pinkish 3rd spiral like you see in the two eyes. The illusion is that there IS no spiral. It’s created by both eye-spirals.
If you focus on one of the two eyes, you’ll get the sensation that the face is growing, like a tunnel getting wider.
So for you idiots who don’t know how to stare into optical illusions, you won’t see a thing. For those of you who understand what optical illusions are, thank you for not being stupid and lazy.
Actually u can see thaqt in her right eye the ripples are moving outward while in the left eye they are moving inward
Is It moving? The top one doesn’t look like it, but the big one does… that’s not an optical illusion.
It is moving GIF
eeeeh
The girl was eventually found. Her parents were killed and she went through a harrowing exodus. Her eyes were so filled with horror because she had seen more than her share in a short time span.
The picture is made of nothing but circles. Use a paint program like Photoshop or GIMP to split it into separate RGB channels. It is made of red rings emanating from her right eye, blue rings emanating from her forehead, and green rings converging into her left eye. The rings have just the right width at each location to reconstruct the original image, not unlike the dots used to create printed images.
I think you might find that the illusion is that the 2 circles interfere with each other to give a third circle on her forehead.
All hail hypnotoad.
If you look at it for too long, it’s kind of disturbing.
nice a 10 frame gif that doesnt even do nything
lol at Smile who looked at this for 20 mins
The piture seems to get bigger if you stare at the eyes, that’s the optical illusion
The third subtle spiral is built in to the animation as well. It is not hallucinated. There seems to be no value in this at all.
Where’s the illusion? It’s just an animation of the cross-section of a dipole field generated by two parallel lines normal to the plane of the picture. One pole is emitting, the other receiving. Her eyes were much more beautiful and haunting in the original un-fiddled picture.
im scared
Okay, so she has hazel eyes. Big whoop, me too. And there’s really no illusion here.
d says:
February 25, 2010 at 8:44 pm
that is NOT a damn optical illusion douchebags
its a moving gif image
qft :))
Headache? No. Nervousness? No. Sleepiness? yezzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…
This is animated my computer kept freeezing and every tim it did the illusion stopped moving when it unfroze the illusion moved.
Wonder if the Time photographers knows what been done to his photo??
LoL I am Just preety shocked after waching this image ! my Eye cant see anymore ..O God I ‘m going to an eye sergan :P
Idk but I didn’t get passm five secondz cuz I felt too creep out by tge way she looked at me in this “illusion” lol scary eyes but beautiful natural
OMG my head!!!!! I feel…… nothing.
What an amazing illusion! If you stare at it for a few seconds, the guy who created it turns into an asshole!
This made me want to throw up… :S
frigging lame. NOT an illusion. I didn’t notice anything watching this animation.
This is not an illusion. The third circle does not originate from an optical illusion of the two circles at her eyes, because I covered them and could still see the pink :P
Hey, Thanks for the seizure you idiots! I woke up and saw it in front of me and went spazz again! Now I have half a tongue, would you like to make a gif. outa that?
After staring at it for approximately 45 seconds I found myself feeling very bored. Did anyone experience this phenomenon?
It makes me sleep…
oh jeez….yeah i can’t stare at that for too long…i feel uncomfortable after 10 seconds and have to look away
Didn’t feel a thing, zero effect!.
That’s not an optical illusion, it’s an animated .gif
Um… this is an animation – how is that an optical illusion?
I didnt relize i was still looking at it until my head hit my computer! lol
It makes her look like Marilyn Manson.
it looks like gerard way if u stare for long XD
I have no effect after 10minutes of watching this and many people have said this so at first i didnt post nothing. But i downloaded this pic to my pc and my gf only saw the nonmoving thumbnail on my desktop and told me to remove it there since she feels it’s very disturbing. No idea if she would feel the same with original Afghan Girl pic tough…
There is something very disturbing about the eyes… I enjoyed it :)
I gotta strange headache after five minutes. It was interesting
I don’t consider this an optical illusion since it is an animated gif
That is so completely lame. It is just an animation, not an optical illusion. Simply one frame after another – a series of changing images.
I guess every movie you see is an “amazing optical illusion” to you. Wow. You are easily impressed.
Sucks!
I threw up.
Nothing. Nothing at all.
IT”S JESUS!!!!
It kinda looked like she was moving towards me, it was kinda freaky.
Nothing is thr..
for me her entire face disappeared…
I think that the illusion comes from looking at her eyes. At first it seems like the pulsating waves are coming from her eyes, but the illusion is that there is a third point where waves originate-> right above her eyes, on her forehead. Not being aware of that probably gave u guys the headache, because you would be focusing on both eyes and but that ‘forehead wave’ would be interfering.
If you see it long enough, the girl is disappeared, the only thing left is that the circles.. ~_~
I also get bored after staring her hard for at-least a minute :(
The only thing it does is make you bored.
It’s annoying to look at because the way it pulsates in inconsistent
*IS IS IS
i am afraid to see this girl
what a nice
After a few seconds of watching it intently, A tremendous wave of nothing hit me.
absolutely no effect on me.
This did give me a headache but in all fairness I was hit by a car and suffer headaches anyways…
she’s smiling to me :)
Stare at her upper nose and she turns and looks at you, creepy
OH MY GOD !!!! When I saw it I became a terrible headache for 2 hours !!!
I got a hard-on.
She,s an alien coming to destroy all of us
Well im not gonna lie she’s freaking me OUT.
It’s headache … Do not spoil this image by this optical illusion..
Ok, I felt nothing even after focussing for a good 5 mins…
yeah now this is a most beautiful magazine
thank’s for brinking this photo’s
we are proud to be afghani
$/-/@/<!r(sweet)
If you stare at it for a while and look away it distorts what you look at
After looking at it for 3 seconds, I went out and killed my neighbors and committed suicide.
How is an animated gif an illusion? It’s called ‘animation’.
Maybe they should track this girl down…..if she is still alive.
Look up Sharbat Gula (a.k.a. Afghan Girl) on National Geographic they did a follow up article on her…they know who she is…check your facts sir.
Not a good idea for people like me with intense motion sickness, made me throw up and i had to lie down… kind of like the movie Cloverfield
Try to look at her upper nose. It looks as if she turns and looks at you. THIS PIC CREEPS ME OUT!!
Did nothing for me! I didn’t throw up,kill anybody, forgot what I was looking at or committ suicide.
Uhh..this may sound funny but i got high a lil’ bit on this one lol since im sleepy :o
i get extremly nervous
I think it’s cool; I don’t get nervous or anything, the lines start to move when I stare at it. COOL (:
Maby it’s because i’m drunk, but this has no effect on me. I stared at it for ages. It’s actually kinda fun.
How long do ya have to stare at it? I did for a good couple minutes or more and nothing. Maybe I was focusing too much on how the circles were moving and not zoned out enough to get the full effect?
ya um i stared 20 minutes my eyes dried up some but thats all.
ALL GLORY TO THE HYPNOTOAD
Look at her upper nose. It’s like she turns and looks at you.
Sorry to kill all your hopes and dreams, but its obvious that the lines are ACTUALLY moving. Look at the thumbnail at the top of the page. It’s just smaller version, but those lines aren’t moving.
umm
my eyes straded to water and then i felt pain in my right ear =]
but it is so cool
i got a boner
wow…, nice….
@Shelby… the lines are meant to be ‘actually’ moving, that’s why it’s called an animation.
that afgan girl is so strage it was like something was hidden behind her eyes… SPOOKY
wow……. freeky
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^ that ‘cool’ guy is an idiot .. T_T its an animation! i mean like come on! u can srsly distinguish moving from ‘stil standing optical illusions’ …omg ..and ofcourse ud get nervous! when u stare at it the image in ur mind may change what u say and maybe ur starting to see the … devil? differences (obviously) from person to person….
Hahaha i saved this pic and its a .gif file and files like that usually move that explains why the lines move
It felt relaxing to me.
it’s weird. the longer you stare, the more contorted ‘Girls’ face becomes. until you you shake it off anyway…
I stared at this the first time and pretty quickly after a few seconds the whole picture seemed to distort into blurs of it;s basic colours, with red rings everywhere, except for the eyes, they stayed perfectly clear.
After reading some fo the comment to make sure I was doing it right, I stared at the bridge of her nose and I started to getantsy, and then the girl seemed to turn around and face me. It was really freaky.
Awesome pic!
Yeah, her right eye (on the left of the picture) is radiating outwardly, so as to appear as slowly getting larger, and the other is irradiating inward, so as to appear as slowly getting smaller. I’m fairly sure the desired effect of this illusion was to make it seem like her head is slowly turning to our right, but it doesn’t work very well
it reminded me of the snake in the movie Jungle Book
That was awesome, reminds of the times i worked in pakistan. I’ve worked in many places in the world (Africa, Nepal, india, Thailand, El salvador) but i have to say, without a doubt, that I find the peoples of Pakistan and Afghanistan to be the most beautiful and unique peoples in the world!
It was hard for me to focus my eyes on the image. The animation kept going on blurry on me.
If you look on the forehead (bout 1cm above her eye lvl) you can see a third source of waves, and since its not as prominent as the two sources located on the eyes you may not notice it, and those waves might confuse you
I looked at it for a couple min then let my eyes blur. Seems there’s a 3rd circle at work there expanding outwards. It’s close to the middle of her forehead, kind of like a 3rd eye.
LOLZ! Stare in the eyes and the thing beocmes so dense it nervouses otherwise its just lolz for the hypnotad.
gaaahhh it gave me a fucking headache >0<
I don’t get it. What’s the illusion here? It’s just a photo with some lame animation on top of it…that’s not an illusion…
Wow, that was freaky.
I stared at her lips, and her eyes seemed to wink or disappear.
At one point I got her to look like a red skeleton.
I second the “ear ache” comment, however mine was the left ear. Not to mention, got pretty nervous, as well. Won’t be looking at that again!
ok -_-” this is actually moving LOL
its not a jpeg format its an animated picture
of course it makes u dizzy LOL
yeah!… stare at the girl’s EYES!!…. something will MOVE… this is neat!… LOL hehehe ^_^ im looking forward for more optical photos… ^_^
nice .. !! its moving and seems like she is staring at me too … !!
it scares me. she scares me. like she’s still out there, standing there, and she has a secret she’s trying to you with her eyes. i looked at her nose, and it looked like she became a old woman. whenever i look at her eyes i feel like at any second she’s gonna scream at me and her face will turn into a hideous banshee, i guess it’s the freakish beauty. she’s amazing and complex, and i love this one.
purely amazing. she is amazing.
IT WON’T STOP SPINNING!
its scary
fake, it isn’t a illusion, is a gif
Because apparently optical illussions cannot be achieved with movement? :/ Why do people think something can’t be an optical illusion if it’s a GIF, whut?
What a lot of nonsense. How can it be an optical illusion if it really is moving? That’s not an illusion it’s just an…optical!
If you look at it for like a while, just look in one spot, the picture starts to “morph” you probably get the headache because there is a third pulsating circle on the forehead, and get nervous because one circle on the eye pulses out and the other pulses in
This made me go dizzy and feel sick, it is amazing though
It’s a .gif-file, it’s animated.. fake
…if you look at the bottom right corner, it looks like she’s getting closer O.o
Ma sha Allah(see the power of God creation)
this eys tells the history of a thousends girls
whom wonders under the Tents, Travellers around all Afghanistan, in these 30 years war they , havent seen much except Tint and Travelling, but they love freedem.
you can see not only their eyes differ but, all the apperances are even more nutral and beautiful live which we stragule to manage with our puluted lives in the City.
Soooo#
I would call it Nuturally Beautiful
that is an animated picture that is not optical illusion
no noervous
no headache
no nothing
3 complete minutos watching…and i got nothing
I put my nuts up against the screen but it didn’t feel any different?
ears start aching after sometime but its nice
I dont like it, it doesn’t seme to do anything the only thing i did notice is your eyes can’t fcus properly as the circles keep changing from 1, 2 and 3 different circles sometime all at the same time and other times not.
It’s been a curious experience.
I think that authors of this animation have chosen this picture because girl’s look is really deep and intense but in my opinion waves effect override it. It doesn’t depend on the picture, try to put a different one, maybe one of yours, and get the same visual effect, waves departing from one eye and waves arriving to the other one, and you’ll feel the same, whatever it is.
Yeah, indeed really funny.
Oh God!, my head hurts!!
i cant stare at it for more than 5 secs or i get dizzy and my head starts hurting!!
how!? i stared at it for 2 min. and still it did not bug me.
look at it with only 1 eye open. it makes it a whole lot easier!
while your heart pumps (pulse) its so to see this stop your breath as much as you can
and view this
In what way is this an optical illusion? It’s not at all.
Yea this is trippy. Ive seen this photogaphe before, (and the episode on Nat. Geo when they finally found out who she is and her looks have been devastated and extremely aged by the trauma and tragedies in her life) it’s sad that she had to live in that environment cause she was just so stunningly gorgeous but then again alot of people were dealing with the devastation in her area at that time. God bless her still, and nice illusion.
Well I was looking at it for about 5 minutes and all I can tell I noticed and again I am not sure about it is that she was moving her head left and right and she was getting older and younger again. Again I am not sure about these but… Hey, I tried!
nothing happened to me..
i looked at this photo almost around several minutes but nothing happened…. :S
Stared at it for a while, it was interesting. Read some comments, went back and looked directly between the eyes. Focusing on that spot for a period of no more than ten seconds, the lines become dominate and then she seems to move, closer.
Try scrolling down and reading some comments to refocus your eyes if it doesn’t seem to work the first time.
Reply on results :D
Same as Ben, I stared at both the left and the right eye individually, for no more than, what, 3 seconds? And I noticed she seemed to move towards me when I looked at the right, and pulled back in the left. :3 Her eyes feel real deep.
it’s emily perkins not Afghan Girl
holy crap that is freaky
i saw nothing special tho…
hahahaaha
wowwww
aaaaa she is hypnotizing meh
yes i see her aging as well i agree with nek
Sorry to spoil things but this isn’t an optical illusion. I’ve seen concentric ring optical illusions which were static but gave a surprising illusion of motion. That’s not what is happening here however.
This is simply two overlapping animated patterns which deliberately confuse the viewer with two different directions of motion.
This effect will induce neausea within a short time for most people, similar to motion sickness. The background image could really be anything but because it’s a face the effect is emphasised even more, as our eyes can’t help but be drawn to the subjects eyes and the centre of the rings.
nothing happened…
It scared the shit out of me!
This thing is hypnotizing people!
You are getting veeeery sleeeeeepy… stare deeeper… deeper…
Its like the snake from the jungle book. It is freaky, but like it VERY MUCH, it is fu**ng clever.
hahahaahahahahaha nothing happened…
nothing happend to me!
it’s a kool illusionary photo. however, it is true that with more sensitive minded ppl it can b hiptonizing. yes, her head does appear 2 move, u just have to look in the right spots 4 a few secongs up 2 a couple mins depending on how sensitive ur mind is 2 things like this. my psycho-therapist used to use something similar for hypnotism to help ppl remember blocked memories and fight addictions…… i like it
question tho…. has anyone ever tried it with 3d glasses???? if u have or decided to do it plz lemme kno how that goes
This is really nice and while you look for longer concentrating to her eyes it is really deep.
my sister recognises her and wants to know that was this pic shown on discovery or national geographyor on any artical??
is it just me or did the face seem to get really big or closer?
Its really scared.. She can makes me sleep .. lol.. I like it..
Wow, I felt really hypnotized by this, and would have been willing to do anything anyone told me for a bit afterwards, it was really trippy!
If someone added text to this I would probably do what it said lol
AFTER AWIEL IT LOOKED LIKE A GUY
Does anyone else see the third eye aspect of the picture??
Wow. That’s crazy! But I have to admit, her eyes honestly scare me. Intense.
it scared me and gave me a headache
I figured it out!!!
stare at the moving picture, the animated one…look at any point on her face, in fact, look anywhere in the picture, focus on that point, now think of what colors you are looking at, the entire picture is only made up of a handful of colors all moving, you can focus on just these colors moving and it is as if the actual picture of her has gone. all you see are black, red, bright green, pink.
there is NO skin color, just the four colors moving over each other….
NO MATTER WHERE YOU LOOK!!
then move your head back to see the whole picture and you see all the color in her face.
Sorry, there is also a blue, the blue is formed in the “3rd eye” circle on her forehead…. :-)
As you look onto the picture, the eye to your left {her right eye}, has circles coming out, the eye on the right {her left eye}, has circles moving in a inward movement. As things appear normally to me, when I look on to anybodies face, or picture of a face.
Oh that was a fairly nifty illusion, using only two colours to make the whole image… There’s two “sources” As previous people have mentioned one radiating outward, the other contracting inward… centered on her two eyes… But the Illusion is that all the circles from the same source are all exactly the same colour. (red for the one and bluey-green for the other)
Was it just me or was the picture blinking
OK, to clear the mystery how it works (And how do you think the guy who created that image got the idea, hm?). It’s simple psychology.
This WILL make anyone nervous and anxious who is not something like a psychopath (whose fear response is not normal). Or let me rephrase, this WILL trigger stress and it can even cause panic attacks in emotionally unstable people. The image suggests widely opened eyes with contracting pupils. It triggers an ancient fear response in your “lizard” brain (the emotional/instinctive brain part that evolved before we were mammals).
People naturally react to the contrast between the white of a wide opened eye and the strongly contracting pupils with fear, because this is a part of a fear expression. If you were a caveman and you see that expression in someone’s face, that person probably just recognized a saber-toothed cat behind your back. It’s crucial for survival to copy the fear reaction immediately and rise stress levels in order to prepare your body to flee, even if you don’t know yet what the threat is.
Just try it at home. Create a strong light condition so you pupils contract strongly, open your eyes and ries your eyebrows widely and walk slowly toward the mirror, looking yourself into your own eyes. For some people it’s already sufficient to trigger a very similar fear response.
And here is a brief description how your eyes express fear (also google for “Paul Ekman”)
When you get frightened, some muscles on your face get tense (I spare the details which ones), your eyebrows raise and your pupils dilate at first. This is to collect as much visual information as possible about the possible threat. Then your pupils strongly contract, which enables your sharp vision and gives you better chances to flee without falling over a tree root or whatever you can fall over. Your eyebrows remain widely open to still allow as much light as possible to pass the contracted pupils. This gives you maximum incoming light possible while prioritizing maximum sharpness.