National Cancer Institute researchers fail to notice ten-legged cat

May 8, 2013 • 4:44 am

UPDATE: Here’s Titan in his four-legged form:

Titan - 4 legs

_________

Here’s where the missing legs went.  (Remember yesterday’s two-legged cat? Sadly, that’s proven to be a Photoshopped ruse rather than a true Google Street View image; see here and here.)

Millicat
This photo was sent by reader Simon Hayward, professor of Urolic Surgery and Cancer Biology at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennesee.  It shows a group of researchers convened at a recent National Cancer Institute “retreat” (pretty cushy, eh?). Hayward added this note:

In the attached photo–part of a panoramic view taken on an iPhone in my backyard last week—three biologists, a computer scientist, and a stray pathologist all fail to notice the ten-legged cat walking by (as indeed did the mathematical biologist who took the picture). Clearly trained observers.

He later appended something from the deci-cat himself:

Titan the cat would like it to be known that this is an illusion caused by his advanced hunting skills!

14 thoughts on “National Cancer Institute researchers fail to notice ten-legged cat”

  2. With his advanced hunting skills Titan decimates the local rodent population

  5. Is this an effect of using the panorama setting on the camera (panning sideways)?

    1. Yes – with the cat walking in the same general direction that you are scanning. The camera stitches the segments together, and we end up with a caterpillar. Didn’t see this effect until we looked at the picture. When I saw the bipedal cat yesterday I assumed it was the opposite effect.

      1. Yes, you are quite correct. But JAC called it a decicat and I would not dare correct him on this blo.., I mean, website.

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