First, a quick plug. In July I head off to Portugal to join 32 other magicians at the world’s first virtual magic conference. Tickets are selling fast, and there are a limited number of participants who can join us online so, in you are into magic, please do consider booking here. Just to whet your appetite, here is a 60 second video about what will be happening…
Onto more serious matters. Yesterday I was sent this great pic of a smiling dog (thanks to Pete Firman)….
My question is – why does the dog look so human? Is it the eyes? The mouth? The way he is sitting? Can you explain the mystery of the human dog?
UPDATE: A few people are say that the photo is a fake. I have no idea if that is the case, but the article it comes from claims that it is genuine (article here).
UPDATE 2: For everyone that says it is photoshopped – the owner has other pictures of the dog here (thanks to @neiltheneil)
March 24, 2010 at 6:45 am |
The picture looks so photoshopped. The normal ‘skin’ around the eyes looks like someone just took a picture of themselves, cut their eyes out and put them on the dog. Add some blur and voila! Fake human dog.
Anyway, ignoring the fact that it is fake, when I first saw it the thing that made me think the dog looked like a human was the eyes. Upon closer inspection of them I figured out that it was fake
March 24, 2010 at 7:03 am |
It’s the eyes, and it’s because they’re human eyes. Photoshopped, but done very well to create a nice spooky uncanny valley effect.
March 24, 2010 at 7:55 am |
Definitely the eyes, and the smile too…obviously photoshopped.
It remains me about that :
lool !!
March 24, 2010 at 7:57 am |
Definitely the eyes…and the smile too which are photoshopped ^^
That remains me about this video :
Loool !!
March 24, 2010 at 7:58 am |
Photoshopped or not, my guess is that the larger-than normal amount of pale, pinkish skin around the dog’s left eye somehow allows our (human) face recognition processes to become more strongly activated than our less well tuned dog face neurons. I’d be interested to see if a similar reaction to the image occurred among people who were less familiar with pale skins.
March 24, 2010 at 8:20 am |
And the dog looks drunk…
March 24, 2010 at 8:37 am |
There’s too much white to the eyes, too.
March 24, 2010 at 8:40 am |
Has to be the eyes!!!! He has human eyes lol
March 24, 2010 at 8:43 am |
Thank you Katie for referencing the uncanny valley. Really creepy.
March 24, 2010 at 8:45 am |
I wonder if that means a virtual conference about magic or a conference about virtual magic. Either way, it seems strange to be travelling across borders to participate in it.
March 24, 2010 at 8:46 am |
Once again JPEGsnoop to the rescue. The photo is heavily edited. It doesn’t even look like a good photoshop.
March 24, 2010 at 9:13 am |
I dare say the skin colour of the nose has a fair amount to do with the dog appearing human too. Eyes, nose and mouth are the three things we use to identify faces and this image, photoshopped or not, has all three
March 24, 2010 at 9:35 am |
It’s the white of the eyes. If you google image search for bichon frise/poodle mix, all the dogs have 100% black eyes. In contrast, ‘Riley’ clearly has sclera and iris areas, and instead of big round eyes has narrow eyes – again a very human thing.
The pink around the eyes I could buy, just about.
March 24, 2010 at 9:51 am |
Aw too cute! Even if it is fake!
March 24, 2010 at 9:55 am |
The ‘mouth’ looks like hair creating a curve rather than a true mouth.
It’s the eyes though that look truely human though. More so the hairless lids and surrounding skin.
And the eyes are wrong for either a poodle or bichon frise. Poodle eyes are very round. Neither have such prominent whites.
Below is a random google for bichon’s to explain my point. Bichon’s often have blue eyes. And regardless of the oddly pale pigmentation, and mangey hairless eyes, the eyes still seem wrong.
http://www.mytopdogs.com/dogpictures/pics/bichon-frise.jpg
http://aspotoft.typepad.com/a_spot_of_t/images/2008/01/23/mushu_and_his_sunbeam2.jpg
http://aspotoft.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2007/11/27/making_sure.jpg
March 24, 2010 at 9:57 am |
Actually. The whites can be quite dramatic on the bischon.
http://ocpets.freedomblogging.com/files/2009/06/web-bichon-bitten.jpg
I’m still inclined to say ‘shopped though.
March 24, 2010 at 10:20 am |
It’s a well known trick from graphists that if you paint the white part of a man’s eye into a dark color, it will make him look more like a monster. This trick is used in horror movies for all types of zombies.
This is because almost all animals (including dogs) have fully dark eyes, they don’t have the white part human have around the iris (their sclera is dark).
At the contrary, if you paint the eye of an animal into white, it should make it look more human…
Here the sclera is white. I suppose that human eyes were pasted onto a dog, because dogs eyes are not that thin.
March 24, 2010 at 11:11 am |
At first I thought it was fake, but the nose makes me think it’s an albino dog:
http://www.dogbreedinfo.com/images19/PekingeseAlbinoMaleYaoLing2.JPG
the narrow eyes might just be a coincidence, with the dog caught in the process of blinking, or with its eyes almost closed because of the light.
March 24, 2010 at 11:47 am |
Don’t just say “It’s obviously photoshopped”. Analyse it!
Take a look at this analysis of a photoshopped image – http://www.hackerfactor.com/blog/index.php?/archives/322-Body-By-Victoria.html
You can scientifically determine if an image has been manipulated – without relying on guesswork.
March 24, 2010 at 11:59 am |
The pixelation at the top of the left eye (the one on the right of the picture) is suspiciously dark, suggesting bad photoshop skills. While the mouth may have been enhanced using a combination of darkening & blur/smudge tool, the main work would have been in the eyes adding white; contracting the eyelids & adding skin (unless they just added another stock image on top).
Add to that it appeared in the Metro…
Fake IMHO.
March 24, 2010 at 12:16 pm |
For everyone who says that it is Photo Shopped, there are other pictures of the dog here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/47822757@N03/
(thanks to @neiltheneil)
March 25, 2010 at 3:03 am
Richard thank you for this link…I thought it was photoshopped too….until I looked at these other photos and saw the eyes over a period of time and then I saw a photo taken that must have been right after being groomed!!! Freshly shaved patches on the front legs….AND shaved around the eyes. Then it hit me how many times has the groomer over trimmed or trimmed very, very close to the skin “So you won’t have to bring the dog in too often….cough….and we won’t get bit too often….cough….I mean great dog you got there come back any time…..lol….so maybe just grooming, blinking, looking up at camera and a tight fitting hat and poof you got a human dog! … :}
March 24, 2010 at 12:46 pm |
Perhaps it’s down to the fact that the elastic on it’s hat is pulling it’s ears back. Making it’s face appear wider than normal.
Stretch your own face sideways and you get the wider eyes and mouth.
March 24, 2010 at 12:54 pm |
There’s an awful lot of skepticism about what’s going on in Terence Eden’s link. It got discussed at http://www.metafilter.com/88069/Victorias-secret-uncovered-by-science#2891002 for example. I wouldn’t trust the tools in question unless they were backed up by an awful lot more evidence.
March 24, 2010 at 1:12 pm |
The dog – meh. The magic conference: Says it will show secrets, does one have to be part of a magic society or otherwise show some evidence of participation in magic to take part? I’ve worked years in the entertainment business, some of it for magicians, so I know my share of tricks and am always interested in how these things are done as a technical matter, but I’m not really in the magic biz and am not likely to be. Under some rules of secrecy I’m not committed enough to magic to learn the secrets, so what are the rules for this?
March 24, 2010 at 2:47 pm
The entry barrier is normally the price – one’s commitment is measured by the money one is willing to pay for the access to the secrets. 55 Euros for the mere curious is not cheap while for people who earn their living with the craft is a price worth paying (or, in this case, a bargain).
March 24, 2010 at 4:10 pm
Makes sense to me, but I expect there are some purists who would think that’s not enough to protect the secrets.
March 24, 2010 at 1:30 pm |
Definitely the eyes. Most dogs’ eyes are all black. Since the dog looked sideways, you can see a lot of white in this picture. And the half close eyes, making it the shape of human eyes.
March 24, 2010 at 1:48 pm |
Real dog or not, you can’t deny this picture was heavily photoshopped (probably with GIMP or Paint). Google “JPEGsnoop”.
March 24, 2010 at 3:36 pm
I’m new to JPEGsnoop, so maybe I am missing something, but all I can see is “ASSESSMENT: Class 1 – Image is processed/edited”, which was evident given that there is a text written on top of the original picture.
I don’t see any hint of “heavy photoshopping”.
March 24, 2010 at 2:19 pm |
The EMC does look extremely tempting, but may I ask why they have decided to impose a limit to the number of participants? Surely one of the advantages of an online event like such is that the size of the audience isn’t limited by the size of the venue?
As for the dog, I tried to cover up the eyes to see whether I still find the expression human-like. The answer is yes, but it might be due to the fact that I already know what I am covering. I shall try this on a friend who hasn’t seen the image before.
March 24, 2010 at 2:38 pm |
The colour of the eyes is probably having an effect, but I think another contributor might be the fact that the dog is looking at the camera, sideways, with the eyelids partially closed. How many animals do you know that can do that?
I don’t think it’s necessarily shopped though. It could just be that the camera caught the dog while blinking, causing the illusion that the dog is holding the eyelids there.
March 24, 2010 at 2:50 pm |
If it’s photoshopped it is a remarkably professional job. I’d say definitely not but that would be unscientific, you guys are just seeing jpeg compression artifacts. It’s almost certainly just a fortuitous combination of camera angle, position and juuust the right facial expression.
March 24, 2010 at 3:41 pm |
It’s the eyes and the mouth together. This shouldn’t be too surprising, though – we often breed animals based on how attractive/adorable they are to us, and being human, we have probably been pushing them towards human-looking traits. Survival adaptations don’t necessarily have to involve the wilderness.
March 24, 2010 at 4:55 pm |
It’s photoshopped, although I think they could have gotten the same effect with much less tampering. The evidence that I’m going by is very easy to see. Zoom in on the eyes. The area of the image that is the left eye is clearly created from a lower resolution than than the fur around it. The images (the dog and the eye) were different sizes once.
March 24, 2010 at 5:43 pm
I don’t see any evidence of that. Try running a really heavy sharpen filter on it, to really bring out the high-frequency components.
March 24, 2010 at 5:09 pm |
I think it’s mostly the human-like eyes, but also the way the dog is sitting. With the hat and the half-eaten cake in front of it, it’s easy to imagine a human child sitting in the dog’s place.
March 24, 2010 at 5:50 pm |
Interesting picture. About what makes it so human? The eyes. No doubt about that. Now whether it is fake or not.
I would say it is original. The blue eyes are not uncommon among young dogs, and the photo depicts the dog on its first birthday. In addition, the dog seems to have an ‘unnatural’ trait anyway: a flesh coloured nose. This suggests that the dog is albino, and indeed, a quick search on the internet mentions tales about albino dobbermans and pitbulls with blue eyes (as blue eyes are caused by a relatively low amount of melanin; the same pigment that, when absent, causes albinism, here a picture of a dog with heterochromia, one eye being perfectly blue http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Husky_pysk_89.jpg ). That would also explain why there is so much white around the eyes.
The rest of the expression is caused by the fact his lips are pulled back.
Usually, the top lip hang somewhat saggy on top of the bottom lip. But sometimes dogs will bite in their own lips, or the lip will curl up, or the skin is pulled back, and you will get this odd smiling effect. Try it with your own dog, it honestly won’t hurt him. That his eyes are somewhat closed, can be due to blinking. All in all, a very rare picture (a blinking albino dog with his skin pulled back), but not a fake, no.
March 24, 2010 at 9:17 pm |
I’m no expert on Photoshop so I have no idea if it’s been edited or not. I do, however, have a miniature labradoodle (who is currently doing mad laps of the backyard waiting for his daily walk). Dogs absolutely have whites around their eyes, just go take a closer look if you don’t belive me! As for the smile, it’s the coat. That crazy (yet wonderfully non-shedding) coat creates a character all of it’s own! Boo often looks like he has a crazy drunken smile when he gets up from lying with one side on the tiled floor and his coat is all smooshed up one side of his face. Unfortunately Boo has a black coat so I haven’t been able to get any good photos yet.
March 24, 2010 at 11:32 pm |
Thats no smiling dog, that’s a mastubating dog!
March 24, 2010 at 11:47 pm |
Photoshop or not, the eyes definitely look human. They’re so squinty, pink, and there’s too much white around the pupils, you don’t see many dogs that look like that.
March 25, 2010 at 7:23 am |
It must be some creation from the 70′s of that mad scientist Walter Bishop! Genetic aberration or photoshop fake it is a very ugly creature.
March 25, 2010 at 9:27 am |
Only tentatively related to Riley but: http://www.humandescent.com
March 25, 2010 at 11:04 am
Now those are so cool….lol…..love them….thank you!
March 25, 2010 at 1:10 pm
Cool. I love the horillas.
March 26, 2010 at 5:16 am |
xkcd: Photoshops
March 28, 2010 at 5:36 am |
With the link posted of other pictures of the same dog, you can see that the eyes are different in the other pictures than they are in this picture. For one, the eye color is different and, two, there is more skin around the eyes in this picture than there are in the others. I’d definitely say the eyes were Photoshoped.
However, I’ve seen a lot of dogs smile like that, so I think the smile is genuine. It just looks fake with presented with the eyes.
March 31, 2010 at 5:51 am |
I haven’t read all the comments, but the majority are saying that it’s fake. I’m inclined to disagree with them. Especially the one who states that 100% of dogs have black eyes. Dogs very much have the white part just as humans do. And dogs can smile. One of my dogs (now unfortunately passed) used to smile. Also, if you actually take a look at the owners photos you’ll see that his dog does actually have skin around his eyes instead of hair. I too have a friend with a dog that is like that.
Again, this is definitely not PS.
March 31, 2010 at 3:23 pm |
Very intriguing. I have nothing add. It seems like everyone has already hit the nail on the head.
March 31, 2010 at 8:26 pm |
I think it is the eyes.
I am the Spoon God.
Everytime you say that you don’t believe in spoons, a spoon dies!
April 8, 2010 at 3:07 pm |
Freaky! But, yeah…that’s totally photoshopped. Dog’s eyes tend to look more round than human’s. Maybe dogs don’t normally have blue-ish eyes…?? I dunno…but he also could just be in the middle of blinking, hence the oblong shape of the eyes…
April 17, 2010 at 9:57 pm |
I am doing a research for a project about dogs, and I found your blog very interesting. Thanks for the info
May 13, 2010 at 10:00 pm |
Why does the dog look so human?
Well apart from the human setting, it’s just in the eye of the beholder.
Humans tend to see human faces in just about everything, so why not in a dog…
August 6, 2010 at 10:54 pm |
I never questioned photos until I got Photshop. With my limited experience I can do wonders with a photo.
I no longer believe any unusual picture.
November 3, 2010 at 12:57 pm |
I think it’s the dogs eyes. Photoshopped or not, it looks pretty freaky!!
November 4, 2011 at 2:28 pm |
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