People are confused if a horse is walking towards or away from them in this optical illusion

People on the internet love pictures or videos with optical illusions. Similarly, when Alesia Willard—who runs an account called @rudniktheroan on TikTok—shared one such video, the internet got confused. Willard owns a 5-year-old blue American quarter horse named Rudnik. Through the video, she asked her followers to guess if the animal was walking towards them or away from them. People had different responses after watching the video.

In the 40-second video, the horse walks through a wintery scene. The text overlay read, "When your horse is so black in the snow that you can't tell if he's walking towards you or away from you." Willard herself was quite puzzled and captioned the post, "There were a couple of times I genuinely didn't know…" People on the platform were baffled. Some thought that the horse was moving towards them, while others couldn't figure it out.

The video has garnered over 16 million views and people have much to say. @mahick93 commented, "My brain went back and forth so much on this, I think I got whiplash." @asparagusandsin wrote, "Fun fact: we only see in 2D. Depth isn't perceived. It's learned and calculated by our brains." @not_so_babbling_brooke pointed out, "There a cut at 16 seconds. At first, he is walking towards you and starts to turn and then the video has a small cut and then he's walking in the opposite direction."

@rinayyyebottomsup shared, "The first time I saw him walking toward you, I was convinced, then I watched again and could see him walking away the whole time." @_barjm_ expressed, "At moments, it's hard to tell, even watching his legs. My poor Brian was losing it. But if you watch the shadow, you can see he's walking away." @hollycolloughx said, "It's so obviously walking away. Look at the ears! Why are the people in the comments finding it so hard."

In an interview with Newsweek, Willard shared that she noticed last year how dark Rudnik looked against the snow. She said that it was almost impossible to distinguish his features because of this reason. "I also realized that because he was so dark, it was hard to tell if he was coming or going at certain angles," she added. Though it snows every year in British Columbia, it was only this year that Willard decided to share a video. Willard also went through the comments and realized that some people couldn't see the illusion while others were confused. "I've been shocked at how many people are still just trying to figure out if he's actually coming or going!" she said. However, the answer to her question was that the horse was walking away.

While talking about optical illusion, @benonwine posted on X, numbers concealed within a strip of a black and grey circle. He wrote, "Do you see a number? If so, what number?" Many people tried to guess the right answer. @PhiliphAuclair commented, "45 283... and what's the catch? Should I book an appointment with my GP?" "Can some people actually not see the end numbers even when it’s pointed out to them?" wrote NickEd82. "Funnily enough, when I click on reply and it gives me a thumbnail, it's much clearer. Because it’s not moving, I guess? Anyway, 3452839 BUT 528 was clear, 45283 was more visible in some lighting than others and the 3 and 9 at the ends were hard to see at all," shared @chronicleflask.

You can follow Alesia Willard @rudniktheroan on TikTok for more content on Rudnik.