Steve Irwin After Burn

Crikey. It's a dead guy in full color! Mighty Illusions, whom I've mentioned before, has an interesting illusion today that shows a performance problem with our retinas that is ascribed to a phenomenon known as persistence of vision. Basically the real world, at the nanosecond level, is a bit faster than our millisecond chemical detection systems. Another great example of "good enough" evolution.

In this illusion the Crocodile Hunter himself, Steve Irwin, is shown in black and white, after a few seconds, the picture is shown in negative color, and it is then switched back to black and white. Due to that slowness in our wetware, Steve now looks like he's in full color! You need to stare at the white dot on the crocodile's belly to make this work.

http://www.moillusions.com/2008/06/crocodile-hunter-steve-irwin-afterimage.html

There's another great link that shows this persistence problem in a simpler setting. The rotating pink dot turns green and finally all the pink dots disappear. It's very disconcerting.

http://www.patmedia.net/marklevinson/cool/cool_illusion.html