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Videos

A Silent GIF That Somehow Makes You Hear a Sound

WTF is going on here

By Rain Noe - December 4, 2017

I've seen my share of GIFs, but I've never seen any that were able to make me hear a sound. Take a look at this and tell me what you experience:

Do you hear anything? According to this informal survey, 75% of viewers' brains fill in the audio blanks to provide the repetitive thudding noise of the impact. The poster of this GIF, Dr. Lisa DeBruine of the University of Glasgow's Institute of Neuroscience and Psychology, believes this is due to a phenomena known as acoustic reflex, whereby the muscles in the middle ear involuntarily contract in response to stimuli in order to protect the ear from damage--and that it is this contraction that we "hear."

I'm no doctor, but I disagree wholeheartedly. Because when I see the GIF I not only hear the thud, but I also hear the "rope" slapping against the ground. I believe that a lifetime of watching television, movies and YouTube has conditioned me to correlate certain visuals--a sharply-vibrating camera shot, for instance--with an attendant noise, like a crash, and that my mind is simply filling in the blanks.

Anyways, are you part of the 75% that can hear the noise?

Videos

Rain Noe

Rain Noe is a writer and industrial designer based in New York City.

8 Comments

Kivi Shapiro

a year ago

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Heard the thuds but not the rope slaps.

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Juan Cano

2 years ago

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Didn't hear it.

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Robyn Fraser

2 years ago

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I did hear something until I realized I was hearing something and then I didn't hear it anymore.

So maybe an overall power of suggestion rather than an internal hearing, if that makes sense?

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Nick McDonald

2 years ago

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Cant hear it, but can definitely feel my ears almost tense up in anticipation of a sound. Interesting for sure.

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Robert Wilkey

2 years ago

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As soon as I read the bit about ear muscled contracting instinctually, I could actually feel that muscle contraction occurring. Very surreal. Also I found that I had to stop watching the gif after a minute because those muscles actually started to ache a bit...

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Jason Pokines

2 years ago

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I have a hard time not *imagining* the sound, but I don't actually *hear* anything.

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- Jason Pokines
  
  Jason Pokines
  
  2 years ago
  
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  I even cupped my ears a bit to better hear the naturally ambient white noise around me, and paid attention to whether or not I heard a change in the pitch of that white noise. Nothing. Either I'm not reflexing or it's not enough to influence what I hear.
  
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Julien Dontneedtoknow

2 years ago

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AFAIK this is a fairly recently discovered form of synesthesia.
If memory serves me it's called, quite simply, "motion-sound synesthesia".

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