Optical illusion: Photo of 'sinking ship' leaves internet baffled

If you see a half-sunken boat in this picture, guess again. Photo / Reddit

This one is sure to get your brain cells firing.

It's a photo that has the internet obsessed, and has left some people staring blankly at their screens, trying to decipher what it is they're actually looking at.

Don't hurt yourself though, because we're here to dispel any confusion.

This photo, posted on Reddit last month, appears, at first glance, to show a half-sunken boat, submerged in a river. Many people said they were worried for any passengers on the ill-fated boat.

But, as the photographer explained, this scene is nothing like the Titanic.

"My broken antenna on my car looks like a half-sunken boat," the photo's owner wrote on their post.

If you see a half-sunken boat in this picture, guess again. Photo / Reddit

What followed was a barrage of comments from confused users, totally spun out on the fact that no one had been hurt in a devastated ship wreck somewhere.

"I seriously thought that's what it was. Till I read the caption," one user wrote.

"Dude that's insane, almost made me dizzy til my brain finally figured it out," another said.

Another claimed they had spent a "full minute looking at it until I realised what it really was".

According to the photographer, the photo was in fact a close-up of their car, but when viewed later, left them totally confused as well.

"I took a picture of it a couple of days ago, to show to the collision centre, and just looked at it now in my photos," the person explained.

"I wondered why I had taken a picture of a boat sinking."

Hundreds of people agreed with the poster, with one person saying they thought the photo was of a "boat that half sunk and then froze in place surrounded by ice."

"I glanced at the title and looked at the pic," another person wrote.

"Then I wondered how anything about an antenna could supersede that fact that this boat was completely underwater."

Others said they were "embarrassed at how long that took" them to clock the broken antennae.

According to the unlucky driver, they had caught their antennae on their garage door, after "owning my brand new car for a grand total of three days".

It comes after another mind-boggling snap, shared this week, of a group of schoolgirls posing with a tortoise.

But this snap has definitely taken its place as the week's most engaging optical illusion on the internet.