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The duck-rabbit is one unchanging drawing that can be seen as either a duck’s head or a rabbit’s head. Philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein used it to ask what happens when we see the same marks under a different aspect: the image stays put, but what it looks like to us shifts.
What is the duck-rabbit?
It is a reversible ambiguous drawing: the same lines can be organized into two recognizable readings, a duck’s head or a rabbit’s head. The ambiguity belongs to the relationship between the marks and what a viewer sees in them; the drawing itself does not change.
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Wittgenstein introduces the figure in §118 of Philosophical Investigations, in a section often presented as “Philosophy of Psychology—A Fragment.” He writes: “In my remarks, the following figure, derived from Jastrow, will be called ‘the duck-rabbit’. It can be seen as a rabbit’s head or as a duck’s.”
What did Wittgenstein mean by “seeing-as”?
Wittgenstein’s interest is not simply that one picture admits two labels. He uses it to distinguish ordinary seeing from the experience of an aspect shifting into view. You might look at the figure and see a duck, then suddenly see a rabbit, even though no line has moved. The physical stimulus remains the same; its perceived organization changes.
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This is a philosophical prompt about what it means to see something as something, rather than an experimental theory that explains the mechanics of vision. The figure also invites broader interpretations—for example, comparisons with how assumptions shape what we notice—but those are extensions of the example, not the sole meaning of Wittgenstein’s passage.
Where did the duck-rabbit come from?
Wittgenstein says his version is “derived from Jastrow.” The commonly reported history traces an unattributed version to the German magazine Fliegende Blätter in 1892, where it reportedly appeared with a caption asking which animals resemble each other most, followed by “rabbit and duck.” The attribution is not fully settled, so it is more accurate to describe the image as commonly reported to have appeared there than to name an original artist.
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What can the drawing tell us about visual perception?
Ambiguous figures are useful in visual-perception research because they preserve the same physical properties while supporting more than one interpretation. Researchers study them in connection with interactions among sensory, cognitive, motor, and physiological processes. But the duck-rabbit alone does not establish one specific mechanism or show that perception is arbitrary: its two readings are recognizable possibilities grounded in the drawing.
A 1999 study by Peter Brugger presented Jastrow’s famous drawing to 100 students alongside 11 published variants. Jastrow’s original ranked seventh of the 12 figures in participants’ rated ambiguity. That is a result from one study’s comparison, not a population-wide verdict about how ambiguous the image is or which interpretation people see first.
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How does it compare with other ambiguous figures?
The duck-rabbit belongs to a broader family of images that can be perceived in more than one way. Other examples named in a review of ambiguous figures include the Necker cube, Schröder staircase, wife/mother-in-law figure, Maltese cross, and vase/faces image. To compare such figures, ask how many plausible readings they support, how clearly perception can switch while the image stays unchanged, and whether a particular discussion uses them to explore psychology or philosophy.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Why does this example still matter?
The duck-rabbit makes a subtle distinction easy to notice: seeing the same marks differently is not the same as seeing a different picture. Its value lies in making that shift available to reflection. For painters and viewers alike, it is a compact reminder that an image is more than its lines: what those lines become depends, in part, on how they are seen.
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