40+ Puzzling Pics That Require A Second Look

Our brain may not be an actual muscle, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t or shouldn’t exercise it. There are many ways to exercise your brain, like reading, writing, solving puzzles — and looking at interesting pictures on the internet. Luckily for us, the internet gives people a way of sharing their exciting experiences with the entire world. You’ll undoubtedly find enough images to enjoy from the list we compiled for this article. Some of these photos will give you a brain freeze, and it may take a while to decipher what’s going on. Other pictures are simply fascinating and will leave you intrigued, wondering how this situation was even possible. Here are 40+ fascinating images for your daily brain exercise!

Well, that’s science.

Having a fruit tree in the backyard is easily one of the best things that could happen to you. Can you imagine how nice it must feel to be able to walk outside, grab a fruit, and walk back inside the house every time you’re feeling hungry?

We are confident that you’ve seen many trees in your life, but we’d bet five bucks that you haven’t seen anything like this before. This tree is half an apple tree and half a regular tree with no fruit. Do you know what this is? This is simply a grafted tree — or, in other words, it’s science at its finest!

The cat’s…in the bag?

You’ve probably heard someone saying that popular idiom “the cat is out of the bag” at least once in your life. But what if the cat decided to stay in the bag — what would that look like? Probably something like this:

This plastic bag looks like a cat, and no one can tell us otherwise. We have no idea how it ended up resembling a feline, but this is amazing. It’s even more interesting to consider that no one did this — the bag looked like a cat by itself!

Giant broccoli!

While the following picture is not necessarily mind-blowing, it is still quite interesting to see how the lighting and angle of the photo turned a regular tree into a giant vegetable. And we’re lucky that this person decided to snap a shot of the moment:

The second this person laid eyes on that glowy tree, the first thing that came to their mind was that the tree looked like a giant piece of broccoli. It’s interesting to see how perspective can determine how we see things.

A magical window.

Ask anyone that enjoys taking pictures, they will inform you that lighting and angle are critical to any photo. You may not be wearing any makeup, but it’ll make you look amazing in your next selfie if you find the proper lighting.

And if you find the correct lighting, angle, and background, you can make your picture look as impressive as this one. It is intriguing to see how each panel of the window makes it look like this person is witnessing four different seasons of the year!

This is aesthetically pleasing.

If there is one thing you need to know about British people, they know how to make a queue. No matter where they are, Brits will somehow manage to pull off an aesthetically pleasing line, and we’re here for it.

We mean, look at this picture! The angle seems to make this giant queue even better. Apparently, all these people were queuing up for a concert, and the person who took the picture just had to share with the world how aesthetically pleasing long queues can be.

A boat?

Do you know when you glance at something and end up seeing something entirely different? That’s a type of optical illusion, and it means that your brain is pulling tricks on you. So now it’s time for you to pull a prank on your brain:

This image is an excellent way of exercising your brain. Can you describe what exactly you’re seeing? That’s not a half-sunken boat — it’s a broken antenna on top of a car. Yes, that’s the roof of a vehicle, not a lake.

Have you ever seen something like this?

With the internet and the speed at which the news travel around the world, it’s kind of hard to see new things. You’ll probably agree with us when we say that it’s rare to feel surprised or even shocked at anything these days. 

But maybe — just maybe — this picture is intriguing to you. Do you have any idea what that is? These are fossils that were found at the depths of the ocean. They are unique, and we hope these scientists can discover where they come from!

Lady of the Corn.

Sometimes, we look at photos and can’t help thinking that there is no way that that’s real. Nowadays, it’s so rare to look at unedited images that we don’t blame you for feeling that way. But the following picture is as accurate as they come:

It’s pretty amazing to look at this photo, isn’t it? If your brain is telling you that you’re looking at the picture of a red-headed lady, don’t worry. We’re all looking at the picture the same way. The only thing is that this is corn, not an actual lady — but it’s a completely unedited photo!

No way this is real.

As we move on in the saga of deciphering unusual images and figuring out if they’re real, here’s another snack for your brain. Take a deep breath and look at this stunning picture taken at a bonfire. What else do you notice?

Look, we get it. This picture looks fake and like someone took a long time to edit the shape of the fire. But the author of the image swears that it is true and that the fire created the form of a deer. It looks like the Patronus Charm in Harry Potter might be real after all!

Took me a second to get it. 

If we don’t provide you with any piece of information before you look at a picture, your brain will automatically analyze the photo and try to come up with an explanation for what you’re looking at. Take a look at this next image and see if you can guess what’s different here.

A glance will tell you that this is a pair of shoes and that you’re looking at the soles. Technically, you’re not wrong on this one. But did you notice what the soles look like? This is a tricky image, for we’re confident you didn’t immediately realize that the soles look like two remote controls!

My eyes!

If you have been looking for the perfect outfit to wear to the next event you’re attending, look no more. This next photo will give you a perfect outfit idea, and you will love it. The guy who’s wearing it in the picture enjoyed his purchase.

When you see this man wearing this outfit during the day, you’d think it’s just another rain jacket and pants. But the truth is that this is not a traditional outfit — turn off the lights, and it becomes the perfect outfit for a party!

How cool is this?

Once you take a look at the next picture, we are almost sure that you won’t get what is interesting about it at first. For all you know, it’s just another regular photo, and there’s nothing special about it, right?

You’re bound to change your opinion once we tell you that this is actually a college campus. Have you ever seen a mall-turned-college before? This is what makes this photo interesting. This college used to be a shopping mall, and now it inherited all the cool stuff that malls have, including the escalators!

Where was this when I needed it?

While this next photo is not necessarily going to help you exercise your brain, it will make you wonder where this product was hiding for your entire life. Have you ever bought anything at IKEA and then assembled it yourself? 

Anyone that has knows that this product would have been quite helpful. Assembling furniture has become one of the most challenging tasks ever, even if the products come with a user guide. This step-by-step toolbox certainly makes things easier!

Surprise!

Buying toys for pets is quite a tricky thing. Some toys can be costly, and we don’t always know if or when our pets will destroy that toy. Now, imagine how surprised this person must have been when their dog obliterated this toy cactus:

The toy was winking and looked like a happy version of itself on the outside. However, when the dog destroyed it, the owner found that, on the inside, the cactus was actually frowning and represented a sad version of itself. We’re sure the creators did this on purpose to make the dog feel bad about destroying the cactus!

What’s going on here?

Dealing with banks is easily one of the most stressful things in life. If you’ve had to solve any issues with your bank, you know what we’re talking about. And the person who took this picture can say that they have a lot of experience dealing with financial institutions:

It kind of hurts the eye to glimpse at this image, doesn’t it? We’ll explain if you don’t understand what’s going on here. This guy requested to receive another debit card after his card was damaged. However, due to some logistic issues, he received a new debit card almost daily!

How is this possible?

In this episode of “amazing things to look at,” here’s another photo that is hard to decipher and hard to explain if you don’t know the context. If we don’t give you any information, your brain will probably come up with a dozen different explanations for this:

Have you figured out what exactly you are looking at? Don’t worry; we’re not letting you hurt your brain with all that thinking any longer. This is simply a bathroom tap that oxidized with time and now looks like a world map covers it.

They’re so lovely.

As crazy as it may sound, many people leave their personal belongings at the library and walk away to run other errands. It certainly shouldn’t be a problem if you live in a safe place, but leaving your laptop behind is probably not something you should be doing.

When this person walked off to grab something to eat, they left behind their laptop and other personal items at the library. Once they returned, they noticed that a librarian had placed this sticker on their computer. Pretty thoughtful of them, right?

A genius idea.

We bet that you’ve never seen anyone praising a person for being lazy. On the contrary, lazy people are often criticized. But the truth is that, sometimes, laziness leads to great things, as you will see in the picture below:

This person wanted to find the easiest way to grab things from the fridge, for they were too lazy to spend a few minutes crouching or bending to pick up products. They came up with the brilliant idea of creating a circular fridge with rotating shelves. Pretty impressive, right?

Dragonborn?

If you’re into role-playing games, then you certainly know Skyrim. This game is one of the most popular installments of the Elder Scrolls franchise and is still played by millions of users. If you’ve played the game, you know what this symbol represents:

Is that the Dragonborn? Well, not really. While this symbol does remind us of the Dragonborn, this is the shape of a dog’s nose! What happened here was that the dog gently touched his owner’s shirt with his nose and left this mark behind.

A piece of art!

Have you ever wondered what happens to the floor once lighting strikes? Given the power of these natural phenomena, it is safe to say that they must leave a path of destruction behind. Believe it or not, it is not usually like that.

This is a sidewalk, and that’s exactly where lightning struck. Is that what you were expecting to see? Personally, we thought that the destruction would be more noticeable, but this is quite an interesting “scar” to look at. On the second glance, we think it resembles a tree.

How am I supposed to eat that?

Ordering food is like a little box of surprises; you never know what you will get. Our orders are completely okay most of the time, and we can enjoy a nice meal. But sometimes we receive a surprise once our food arrives.

This guy ordered a cheese pizza, but it wasn’t the shape of the food that caught his attention. Do you see that black square in the photo? That’s the pizza he ordered. Why in the world would the restaurant send his order like this?!

Who laid all of these?

We live in a mesmerizing world would be quite an understatement. We all know that Planet Earth is incredible, and it’s amazing how our planet continues to surprise us every day. We mean, what other planet is experiencing these types of natural phenomena?

Have you ever seen anything like this? While it looks like an animal laid many eggs in the ocean, these are not real eggs. They’re called ice eggs, which happen when the water and the wind roll over ice. Somebody even said that this is how water is born!

I don’t know what I’m looking at.

Technology always finds a way to surprise us, even if it’s not necessarily a good kind of surprise. Once you look at the following picture, you’ll understand what we are talking about. Do you have any idea what that is?

This person is holding a wireless earbud. The fact that we can listen to music on those tiny devices is fantastic in itself. But do you have any idea how it works? All we know is that earbuds have magnets, and when this red earbud fell on the sand, the magnets inside of it separated all that iron from the sand.

That’s such a helpful thing.

Paying taxes is something that we all have to do, whether we like it or not. The money from our taxes keeps our governments standing, though we don’t always know where exactly our money is going when we pay all those taxes.

In Australia, the government tries to maintain a transparent policy and sends taxpayers these statements where they can see in detail what their taxes are paying for. This is a pretty interesting way of letting taxpayers know that they’re not paying taxes in vain. 

No Photoshop here!

Who doesn’t like the colorful aspect of the rainbow? The aesthetics of a rainbow is perfect, especially when it comes to taking pictures. If you want to create a rainbow effect anywhere, all you need to do is to filter light through glass.

This is a pretty cool stove, isn’t it? The truth about this stove is that the owner didn’t paint the knobs to resemble the colors of a rainbow. They just placed their fish tank directly in front of the stove, and the sunlight coming through the window did the rest of the job!

I love this idea.

If you rely on ride applications such as Uber or Lyft, you know how some drivers just don’t seem to get a hint sometimes. There are days when we’re not feeling talkative, and the last thing we want is to maintain a casual conversation with a stranger in a car.

This Uber driver had the most brilliant idea ever with that in mind. He came up with a “ride menu,” which gives his customers the option of choosing the kind of ride they want. Do you feel like talking? Choose any of the rides — except the Simon and Garfunkel one; that’s for those who want complete silence!

The wonders of optical illusion.

Because it’s been a while since we last gave you a brain freeze, here is another picture to get the wheels in your head spinning. Take a look at this photo and create a mental description of what you’re seeing.

This picture is living proof that the angle of your camera will determine how things look in a photo. We’re sad to inform you that you’re not looking at a cliff — this is merely a puddle. The person who took this photo made the most of the angle and created a unique optical illusion.

How do you describe that in a document?

Most of the world’s population has brown eyes, and it’s safe to say that a lot of those people want to have blue or green eyes. Why? It’s just a matter of aesthetics, really. And while people with colored eyes are unique, there’s a group of people who are even more special.

It’s the people with heterochromia. If you don’t know what that is, it’s pretty simple. Some people are born with two different colors in their eyes. For instance, some of them have a blue eye and a green eye. And then there are people like this girl, whose eyes are half-hazel and half-green.

Garfield?

Who is America’s most beloved cat? The answer to that question is a no-brainer; it’s Garfield. This incredibly funny character is a national treasure, and no one is allowed to disagree with that! But what if we told you that Garfield just might be real?

Is your brain spinning out of control right now? Because that’s how we felt when we first saw these photos. This cat is so focused on the task (staring right into the tortoise tank) that he doesn’t even look real. We have no idea if it is real. All we know is that this is probably what Garfield would look like in real life.

Let me double-check that.

Do you know when you glance at something and end up seeing things that aren’t actually there? This happens to all of us almost daily, and we usually have to double-check to make sure that our eyes aren’t deceiving us.

This picture deserves the top spot in the list of photos that you must double-check. While it looks like someone disposed of multiple body parts in the dumpster, those are mannequins. Imagine walking by this store and seeing that out of your eye!

Potato Starlord!

If you’re anything like most adults, you probably buy vegetables and tell yourself that you will eat them before their natural expiration date. And, like most adults, you end up leaving them to rot in the depths of your fridge.

Do you see that alien-like thing sprouting all over this person’s pantry? That’s what happens when you buy potatoes and leave them unattended for three months. It looks like this potato is trying to take over the person’s house, and it is just mind-blowing.

My Tesla can’t read this!

Nature is like a little box of surprises, even if we kind of already know what to expect. When it’s storm season, we know that things will not be good for a while weather-wise. But no one ever expects things to be this bad:

This is what this road looked like after a storm hit. The storm picked up the road and changed its direction. We’ve never seen anything like this, and we can’t help but wonder how an automatic car would react upon coming across this weird road.

This is beautiful!

Snowstorms usually leave lots of harmful things behind — but that doesn’t mean they can’t send at least one beautiful thing to us. In this case, this snowstorm left behind some type of cape for this house, and it’s amazing:

At first sight, it’s tough even to tell that this is snow, right? The whole setting looks surreal and like something that was photoshopped. But that’s not the case — this is simply how this house looked after a snowstorm!

Creepy much?

Every profession has its inside jokes, and it’s not unusual for dentists to crack jokes related to their craft. We bet that you can probably think of a trick or two that your dentist told during one of your visits.

Well, this dentist decided to take his jokes one step further and got this picture framed and put it on display at his office. This is probably his way of saying that having healthy and pearly white teeth will change your whole appearance. We can only hope we won’t look as creepy as Gollum does in the picture.

I’d love to hear the story behind this.

Remember how we sometimes have to double-check things to make sure that our eyes aren’t deceiving us? Well, the people in this neighborhood certainly had to do that. Imagine coming home only to find a giant whale on your neighbor’s front lawn one day.

This is obviously not an actual whale, but it’s still weird. What are they planning to do with a giant inflatable whale? We’re pretty sure that it wouldn’t fit inside a pool. This is one of the pictures that make us wish we knew the context behind it!

Thank you for educating me.

If you are anything like most of the world’s population, you probably buy things without even considering checking the ingredients. Who cares what is in the composition of soap or toothpaste, right? Well, the truth is that sometimes it is interesting to know.

Do you know what calcium carbonate does to your teeth when using toothpaste? We don’t know either — but it’s good to know that this ingredient comes from chalk and is a gentle abrasive. Even if you don’t know what these ingredients represent, it’s pretty interesting to know what they do. Share this knowledge with friends to impress them!

Can you pinpoint it?

If you feel like being challenged, you will love the following picture. There isn’t a lot of information to digest in the picture, but there is one thing that will puzzle your mind. Looking at the image, can you tell what we’re talking about?

There is a giant dice in the picture. This may seem pretty random; after all, why would someone throw that dice over there? However, that’s not an actual dice — someone painted one of those square-shaped rocks and made it look like a giant dice.

Duck by the ocean!

You’ve probably heard the idiom “to be like water off a duck’s back,” — but have you ever seen a duck getting water to its back? It’s not that hard to see that, especially considering that ducks and water have a tight relationship.

Ducks usually hang out in lakes or rivers — but have you ever seen a duck in the ocean? It’s hard to tell how exactly this duck ended up at the beach, but judging by its face, it is fascinated by the size of the ocean!

That’s dope.

If you want to do a good deed and help someone in need, you don’t have to look very hard. Some people need money to get by, but others need something that we can all donate — blood. And this blood bank certainly knows how to attract donors.

With this fantastic design, it’s safe to say that many people want to donate blood here. See those bars? Those represent the blood levels that the bank has in stock, and it looks like they might need some extra donations.

So this is how they do it?

Do you ever stop to wonder how nurses and vets treat big, scary animals like gorillas? We mean, those animals are enormous, and it’s probably not wrong to guess that they don’t appreciate doing check-ups and having people examine their bodies. 

It turns out that gorillas are put under anesthesia just like humans. However, we suppose that it takes a lot more anesthesia to get a gorilla to sleep like this. On the bright side, everything was okay with this big guy, and he could continue his life happily and healthily!

This bench was made for me.

People-watching is a legitimate hobby, and you shouldn’t feel embarrassed to admit that you could sit at the park for hours just observing other people. The thing about this hobby is that park benches aren’t always comfy to sit on.

Now, imagine sitting on an adjustable bench just like this one. The whole concept of watching people at the park would change. You can lean back and sit there for hours watching the passersby and coming up with stories for them in your head. Amazing, right?

The wonders of nature.

The topic of captivating images to look at is quite rich. We can observe and be impressed by so many things — it’s hard even to choose just a few images. However, when you come across a picture like this next one, you immediately classify it as an interesting photo:

After it snowed, this chair was covered in snow. While there was nothing extraordinary about that, something amazing happened when the snow melted away. You can see the shape of a tree on that chair, can’t you? That’s 100% natural!

Have you ever seen something like this?

Few people have the privilege of living close to an airport. At the same time, they must have some trouble getting used to the loud noises coming from the airplanes. These people also get to see planes flying and out every day.

Do you have any idea what you’re looking at? That’s simply the path airplanes follow when they’re departing from this airport. A photographer who lived nearby the airport set his camera to take multiple shots through the night and got this fantastic result.

Why would you do this?

Music is medicine for the soul, or so they say. Regardless of your thoughts on classical music, we are confident that you can’t disagree when we say that pianos create some of the most beautiful sounds ever heard by humanity.

Lots of people can only dream of owning a piano. These instruments can be quite expensive — but this guy doesn’t seem to care. He turned an entire piano into a bookshelf. And yes, that’s a real piano! Pretty crazy, right?

Stairway to heaven!

Nature always manages to surprise us in the best ways possible. Depending on where you live, you probably get to see the most amazing natural sightings every day. However, we are sure that you haven’t seen something like this before:

At first glance, you may think for a second that this is a waterfall. Indeed, the shape of this staircase paired with the water flow does give off the impression that this is a waterfall. We have no way of explaining how this whole thing came about, but it sure is interesting to look at.