A horse named “Rudnik” is taking the internet by storm after appearing to move, impossibly, in two directions at once through a snowy expanse in a head-scratching video. The horse has, unwittingly, exemplified an eye-tricking phenomenon found in well-known optical illusions.
As social media weighs in on whether the animal is moving toward the camera or away from it, it has found that even some of the most confident guessers were surprised when they learned which way he was actually going.
You decide: Is Rudnik retreating into the distance, or approaching nearer? The jet-black beast becomes an equine enigma against the snowy backdrop, making it nearly impossible to tell. Scroll down to find out the answer.
The video was originally posted on Instagram on January 20, overlaid with text reading, “When your horse is so black in the snow that you can’t tell if he’s walking towards you or away from you…”
Rudnik’s owner, Alesia Willard, took the video after a snowstorm in Kamloops, a city in British Columbia, Canada.
The puzzling illusion has sparked a debate reminiscent of the explosive debacle over a blue dress — or was it gold? — that swept the internet in 2015.
Contention quickly arose in the comments as some insisted Rudnik was walking away, others were positive he was approaching, and a third camp conceded they had no idea, like one person who wrote, “That horse is a wizard. Master of illusion.”
“This messed with my brain,” another commenter said.
So, which way was the horse actually walking?
“There were a few times I genuinely couldn’t tell,” Willard wrote in her post.
But she did ultimately reveal that her hoofed companion was moving away from her the entire time.
Some remained skeptical, like a user who argued they were sure Rudnik changed direction at one point. Willard, however, replied, “Nope he’s walking away the whole time.”
Others felt validated, with many pointing out that a closer look at the horse’s feet reveals that he kicks up snow toward the camera, which indicates he’s moving away from it.
The ambiguity of Rudnik’s walk tricks the eye similarly to the way the “Necker cube,” a two-dimensional shape, appears to be both retreating and protruding at once.
A 2005 study explained that “a sudden and unavoidable ‘mental switch’ occurs whenever two or more interpretations of a given picture are equally likely.”
Several people noted experiencing this “mental switch” while attempting to decipher the Rudnik video, with comments reading, “I can flip it in my mind so easily,” and “it keeps switching.”