A seemingly innocent image posted by the popular Facebook page Minion Quotes is driving internet users wild – after it challenged them to count every duck in a sneaky new brain teaser.

A Facebook page called Minion Quotes recently shared this optical illusion, which shows a flock of happy white ducks scattered across a bright yellow background. 

At first glance, the picture looks simple enough – just rows of cute little birds waddling along in perfect formation. 

But there’s a catch that has left even the sharpest-eyed puzzle fans scratching their heads.

At the top of the image, the bold question reads: ‘How many duck you can count?’ Easy, right? Not so fast.

Take a closer look and you’ll spot the real twist: some of the ducks are hiding in plain sight. 

Tiny ducklings are tucked away inside the outlines of their larger, feathered friends – camouflaged so well that many viewers miss them completely. 

A few are peeking out from behind wings, while others are so perfectly blended you might need to squint to see them. 

A Facebook page called Minion Quotes recently shared this optical illusion, which shows a flock of happy white ducks scattered across a bright yellow background

Within hours, the comments section erupted as thousands rushed to post their guesses – ranging from a handful to 17 ducks. 

Some claim to have cracked the code, while others are still scanning the image, convinced they’ve missed a sneaky stowaway.

Optical illusions and hidden picture puzzles have long been a hit on social media, providing not just entertainment, but a test of your observation skills – and this duck-themed challenge is no exception.

Think you can outsmart the flock? 

Despite hundreds of guesses, only the eagle-eyed few can spot all 22 – did you?

Think you’re seeing reality clearly? For a group of certain professionals, years of training have sharpened their vision so much, even optical illusions struggle to trick them. 

For decades, scientists believed that visual illusions were automatic – hardwired quirks of the brain that no one could truly ‘see through’. 

A new study has found that radiologists, who spend their careers scanning complex images for subtle signs of disease, are far less susceptible to certain visual illusions than the average person

But a new study has found that radiologists, who spend their careers scanning complex images for subtle signs of disease, are far less susceptible to certain visual illusions than the average person. 

A recent study explored whether expert training in medical image analysis could alter how people perceive visual illusions – and the results were surprising.

Radiologists, who spend years learning to detect subtle signs of disease in complex medical scans, need to filter out irrelevant information and focus quickly on key visual details. 

This intense training raised an intriguing question: could it also help them see through optical illusions?

To find out, researchers tested 44 medical image experts – ranging from reporting radiographers and trainee radiologists to certified radiologists – alongside a control group of 107 psychology and medical students. 

Participants were shown classic optical illusions such as the Ebbinghaus, Ponzo, Müller-Lyer, and Shepard Tabletops, and asked to make forced-choice decisions based on what they saw.

Which orange circle do you think is bigger? In the image above, the orange circle on the left is actually six percent smaller than the one on the right – yet most people perceived it as larger

Now, which orange circle do you think is bigger? In this second image, the size difference increases: the left circle is now 10 percent smaller. Still, many non-radiologists continued to see it as larger

And now, which is larger? Only when the size gap reached nearly 18 percent smaller on the left, as shown in this final image, did most non-radiologists finally start to see through the trick

In the first image above, the orange circle on the left is actually six percent smaller than the one on the right – yet most people perceived it as larger. It’s a textbook example of how our brains can be misled by visual context.

In the second circle image above, the size difference increases: the left circle is now 10 percent smaller. Still, many non-radiologists continued to see it as larger. 

But this time, most radiologists correctly judged the sizes, highlighting how their trained perception cuts through the illusion.

Only when the size gap reached nearly 18 percent smaller, as shown in the final image, did most non-radiologists finally start to see through the trick. 

The findings were clear: trained radiologists were significantly less susceptible to most of the illusions, outperforming the control group in perceptual accuracy. 

Interestingly, this advantage did not extend to the Shepard Tabletops illusion, where both groups performed similarly.  

The Shepard’s Table Illusion was introduced by cognitive scientist Roger N. Shepard in 1990.

It is an optical illusion that messes with our perception of shape and size by using two identical parallelograms – tabletops – at different angles.

The Shepard’s Table Illusion is seen above – which table do you think looks bigger? Read on to find out the answer

The two tables are in fact the same size but our brain perceives one as longer and thinner and the other as wider and shorter. 

What’s more, radiologists at the very start of their training were no better than the students, suggesting that this resistance to illusions isn’t innate – it’s developed through years of focused practice.

These results challenge current theories of expertise, which generally argue that specialist skills don’t transfer outside a specific domain.

In this case, expertise in reading medical scans appears to offer a broader benefit: enhanced visual discrimination that extends even to general illusions.

Of course, there’s no shortcut to achieving this level of perceptual precision. 

As the researchers note with a touch of humor: if you want to learn to see through illusions, all it takes is five years of medical school followed by another seven in radiology.