If you own a cat (or have ever been on the internet) you probably how much they love to sit in boxes. This also applies to squares drawn on the ground – even if it’s only an illusion.
The Kanizsa illusion uses Pacman-like shapes to form the corners of a shape such as a square. Our brains fill in the gaps, telling us the shape actually exists.
During the past year, over 500 people participated in a citizen science project to see what cats think of this illusion. They marked their floors with a square, a Kanizsa square, and a different pattern also using the Pacman shapes. Participants then filmed their cats to see where they sat.
The felines seemed to have no preference between the actual squares and the illusion, choosing either one over the third pattern. This suggests their brains trick them just like ours do, telling them a square exists and that, for some reason, it’s worth sitting in.
This article was published in Issue 49 of Double Helix magazine (https://www.csiro.au/en/Education/Double-Helix). Copyright for this article is held by CSIRO.
Lachlan Writes Science 