eli5: How come our eyes immediately think the Scottish flag as white stripes instead of blue triangles? How come this occurs for some images and for others it doesn’t (like the flag of england?)

Question

[Click here to see the flag](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Scotland#/media/File:Flag_of_Scotland.svg)

In: 63

Answer 1

Triangles are relatively uncommon in nature. Stripes and straight things are very common. Your brain is picking this up as white on blue because it’s most likely that the white straight things are on top of a blue base.