At least to me.
Probably because, yeah, I wouldn’t have caught that in time. Which means that the pace and theme of that encounter would have been absolutely not up to me, and statistical trends aren’t really all that helpful when it comes to individual events. I should probably not hang out in wilderness areas, really.
Cheer up: there is no predator that is quite as still in real life as they are in a photograph. Take a reasonable percent off your reaction time to account for that. We’re much better at recognizing living things in reality than we are at recognizing two dimensional depictions of them.
I think its the same reason why, walking down a street, my ‘pretty girl’ gauge is totally different than pictures – I can be totally smitten in the moment by a girl who wouldn’t even merit a second glance online. Caveat: None are as pretty as my wife, who is beautiful in real life and in photos.
Anyway, the point is: don’t forget photographs are just a depiction, because our brains don’t.
Hey, kitty! Pretty kitty, too. I think you are selling yourself short since this is a small picture, not real life.