'My mum took snap of boy in shop mirror and was freaked out after looking at it'

A woman shared a photo of her two-year-old son in a supermarket trolley, but people on Reddit have been left utterly confused by the image after staring intently at it

Capturing precious moments of little ones as they develop and discover the world can be absolutely delightful. Whether it's a trip to the local park or witnessing their amusing reactions to groceries during a supermarket visit.

One grandmother decided to preserve such a moment during a shopping expedition with her two-year-old grandson, though she hadn't anticipated the bewildering outcome. A Reddit post, shared on the optical illusions forum, displayed a reflection of the youngster seated in the shopping trolley while taking a drink from his cup – but it's what left internet users utterly baffled. The post was titled: "Mum took my son to the store and took a pic in the mirror. The picture does not match reality."

Underneath the photograph, it had a lengthy explanation.

It read: "Mu mum took my two-year-old son to the store on Thursday and walked into the mirror aisle.

"As she walked with him, my son was playfully messing with his water cup so she decided to take multiple photos of him in the mirror.

"As it was with an iPhone, 2 of the 3 photos were 'live' photos and show my son thrashing the cup around and speaking gibberish."

The woman subsequently disclosed how her own mum was left stunned when reviewing the snapshots.

She continued: "One of the photos, however, was not live and when my mum reviewed it, she noticed my son's reflection did not match his exact pose and cup positioning in reality.

"Is this just a glitch in timing of the photo or am I making this out to be more than it is? She is freaked out about it."

The post quickly garnered 3,700 upvotes as users eagerly offered their interpretations.

One user remarked: "He is a wizard." Another quipped: "It's just that the boy in the mirror is thirstier than your son."

A third commented: "Oh dang. That freaked me out a bit. Must be a rolling shutter thing."

Some attributed the oddity to the iPhone's live photo feature. An individual elucidated: "Yeah when you take a picture on iOS like that, it doesn't take just one picture, it takes several frames from before.

"And after you hit the shutter button, splits those into subframes like foreground, subject, and background then automatically merges them together into the final franken-image which combines the best parts of each frame.

"So probably something like he moved the cup very fast as the photo was taken so the clearest image for the mirror area without cup movement motion blur was before it began moving and was on his mouth while the clearest foreground subframe of the actual kid was after the movement.

"The image processing doesn't realise that's a mirror image of the kid in the foreground and should match up with him it just looks for quality. Or you captured an image of his djinn companion."