Optical illusions have been widely used to compare visual perception among vertebrates because they can reveal how the system is able to adapt to visual input. Sensitivity to visual illusions has never been studied in reptiles. Here, we investigated whether red-footed tortoises, Chelonoidis carbonaria, and bearded dragons, Pogona vitticeps, perceive the Delboeuf illusion. This illusion involves the misperception of the size of a target circle depending upon the context in which it is presented. We adopted the same size discrimination for both species to compare their performance. Animals were presented with two different types of trials. In control trials, they received two different-sized food portions on two plates of the same size. In test trials, they received two same-sized food portions but presented on two different-sized plates. If they perceived the illusion in the same way as humans, we expected them to select the food portion presented on the smaller plate. The tortoises exhibited poor performance in the control trials, which prevented us from drawing any conclusions about their perception of the Delboeuf illusion. In contrast, the bearded dragons selected the larger amount of food in control trials. In test trials, they selected the portion presented on the smaller plate significantly more often than chance, suggesting a human-like sensitivity to the Delboeuf illusion. Our study provides the first evidence of the perception of a visual illusion in a reptile species, suggesting that rather than simply detecting visual input, they interpret sensory information captured by photoreceptors. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

中文翻译：

---

爬行动物可以感知视觉幻觉吗？在红脚乌龟（Chelonoidis carbonaria）和胡须龙（Pogona vitticeps）中的Delboeuf幻觉。

错觉已被广泛用于比较脊椎动物之间的视觉感受，因为它们可以揭示脊椎动物如何适应视觉输入。从未在爬行动物中研究过对视觉错觉的敏感性。在这里，我们调查了红脚乌龟，龟龟（Chelonoidis carbonaria）和胡须龙（Pogona vitticeps）是否察觉了德尔博夫幻觉。这种幻觉涉及对目标圆的大小的误解，具体取决于呈现目标圆的上下文。我们对两个物种采用了相同的大小判别，以比较它们的性能。对动物进行了两种不同类型的试验。在对照试验中，他们在两个相同大小的盘子上接受了两个不同大小的食物。在测试中，他们收到了两个相同大小的食物，但分别放在两个不同大小的盘子上。如果他们以与人类相同的方式感知错觉，我们希望他们选择较小盘子上的食物部分。这些乌龟在对照试验中表现不佳，这使我们无法对他们对德尔布厄夫幻象的感知得出任何结论。相反，在对照试验中，胡须龙选择了更多的食物。在测试试验中，他们选择出现在较小板上的部分的机会明显多于偶然性，这表明人类对Delboeuf错觉有类似人的敏感性。我们的研究为爬行动物中的视觉错觉的感知提供了第一个证据，这表明，它们不仅仅是检测视觉输入，而是解释感光器捕获的感觉信息。（PsycINFO数据库记录（c）2019 APA，保留所有权利）。