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Is the cat going up or down the stairs? Check out the latest Internet optical illusion

Recently, the Internet drove everyone up a wall about a picture of a dress. The latest craze? It's about a cat, and some tricky stairs.
/ Source: TODAY

Just a few weeks ago, the Internet drove everyone crazy by turning a photo of a dress into a "what color is it" sensation that had everybody arguing.

Well, world, here's your new Internet craze: Is the cat in this image going up the stairs ... or down the stairs?

The slightly fuzzy black-and-white image popped up on 9Gag.com and ever since it's been tantalizing folks all over the Web. It's easy to see it both ways, so long as you imagine a shift in the camera's angle. But eventually, most folks are very sure that cat is going ... down! No, up! No, down! No, up!

On the "down" side, most people point to the apparent lip on the steps; few staircases would have a surface like that for people to step on. Noted one commenter, "Look at the cat’s tail — it’s facing upward, or the opposite of the direction it’s moving in. If the cat were to go up the stairs, it’s tail would point downward."

On the "up" side, others suggest that the lip could be on either side, particularly if it was protecting a mosaic pattern, for example. Wrote one commenter, "The cat is going up, the tail is used to balance the body of the cat and in this case the tail is elevated upward so that when the cat uses its rear legs to push up it pushes parallel to the line on which gravity is working on the tail to stabilize itself."

And then there are the science geeks who say it's like Schrödinger's Cat: going up and down at the same time.

What do you see? Let us know in the survey!

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