The Butt Ugly Weblog

--Schwester, 04-Oct-2007

Today I've seen people commenting this on 3 IRC channels and only one person announced initially seeing her turn anti-clockwise. Most but not all could see her spinning the other way by either glancing away for awhile or covering the image so that you can see only the sole of her foot.

N = 21. Young Finnish male & female with academic background. I'd guess this is pop science and not too reliable as testing method?

--Suviko, 04-Oct-2007

Yup, that's why I updated the entry after seeing so many people saying that it initially spins clockwise - looks like the newspaper was a bit sloppy.

--JanneJalkanen, 05-Oct-2007

I say it turn clockwise. If it is a brain hemishere thing, one would expect that by covering the left eye it should turn counter-clockwise, but for me, it turns clockwise no matter which eye I cover.

--AnonymousCoward, 08-Oct-2007

Nope. You should read up on your basic biology: the work split between eyes is not that clearly defined. Some explanation from Wikipedia, though it's not very thorough.

--JanneJalkanen, 08-Oct-2007

Thank you. I was finally able to make the dancer move counter-clockwise. Surprisingly, I succeeded only when the dancer was in the left periphery of my visual field.

--AnonymousCoward, 09-Oct-2007

Not that surprising; your left visual field is dominated by the right half of the brain (and vice versa).

--JanneJalkanen, 09-Oct-2007

I'm a bit late to comment on this... I tried this with my kids. They saw it spinning both ways, taking a turn every now and then. As for me, first I only saw it turning clockwise, but occasionally I managed to turn the dancer around. Though I have not had a closer look in an animation editor, I must agree: it is brilliantly made.

--Inka, 23-Nov-2007