Imagine yourself in a situation where you are stuck in the jungle with only 12 seconds to escape before a tiger attacks and rips your limbs off.
In this made-up scenario, if you can see the tiger before it does, you will probably make it through, either because you can avoid it well enough or, more likely, because the tiger will believe it can no longer ambush you if you look it in the eyes.
It may be time for some serious eye contact if you ever find yourself in danger from a tiger’s teeth or claws. This is not a theory you want to test to its breaking point.
This is the task: glance at the image below and see if you can identify the location of the tiger in only 12 seconds.
It sounds excellent to hear that being able to do this indicates you have good vision and a high IQ.
Naturally, it’s possible that your tiger sighting was really a stroke of luck, and you shouldn’t place too much importance on an IQ test that requires you to play “spot the tiger” for a total of 12 seconds.
Nevertheless, it’s a fascinating little brainteaser that you might figure out right away or that might require you to carefully examine every pixel while the timer counts down.
The true purpose of this test is to measure your ability to identify unusual features and rapidly deduce their possible causes.
This is what many optical illusions accomplish; they present you with a visual puzzle that you must, in essence, solve extremely quickly.
One of them is as basic as asking you which building is closest to the camera. It may seem simple, but it can be more difficult than it looks.
With a little help from Microsoft Paint, I was able to identify the answer to our tiger puzzle and share it with you.
The tiger is squatting in the underbrush directly beneath the main tree. To be quite honest with you, reader, I didn’t even notice it at first since I believed it was perched on a tree branch.
Rather, I discovered just in time that those were merely leaves, and the really perilous stripes were situated somewhat closer to the ground.
Should you still be unable to view it, let’s take a deeper look inside.
Now that should be easier for you to see. However, since human vision can’t really zoom in very far, approaching the tiger several steps at a time would be the real-world equivalent of this.
Take a peek at this different puzzle that an artist created for GCHQ if you’re looking for something a little less time-consuming.
You might have the problem-solving skills of a spy if you can decipher the clues and piece them together to create a message.