Just as our visual system strains to see the vase and the two faces at once, we struggle to conceive of a motion that has a dual motivation: to put and to fetch. A paper by Van de Cruys, Wagemans and ...

Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Similar anatomy, not a shared sense of humor, might be key for ...

Close your eyes and imagine a sound, someone’s voice, coming from your left. It slowly shifts to come from behind you, then moves to your right. Around and around, it circles. Suddenly, the voice ...

This trick required the scientists to put food in one hand, and present that hand to each individual monkey. Clayton (a professor of Comparative Cognition at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow ...

When magicians perform spectacles that seem to defy the laws of nature, they do so by manipulating psychological reality. Hence, the principles underlying the art of conjuring are potentially of ...

A Humboldt's squirrel monkey is fooled by the "French Drop" magic trick. Credit: E. Garcia-Pelegrin et al., 2023 The key to a successful sleight-of-hand magic trick is how well a magician manipulates ...

Stephen has a science degree with a major in physics, an arts degree with majors in English Literature and History and Philosophy of Science and a Graduate Diploma in Science Communication.

Pulling a rabbit from a top hat. Teleporting from one cage to another. Finding a coin behind a five-year-old’s ear. Magic has long inspired a sense of awe and wonder, but one portion of the population ...