It says something that I'd disagree about who won in the contest in the epigraph. Fooling a flock of birds sounds much harder than fooling somebody of the same species, not because birds are better at perception but because they're too alien for the same tricks to work on them. A painting of grapes that would attract birds probably wouldn't look particularly representational to humans; it'd be a kind of art that required conceptual flexibility and a deep understanding of both birds and grapes. Something, indeed, that you'd expect to see only in a modern art museum.
Hawk decals pasted on windows seem to do a pretty good job of fooling birds, but wouldn't fool humans. So do scare-crows
Nice try... Zeuxis.
Interesting contrast to modern art. As photos have made it absolutely trivial to produce life-like images, fooling the buyer has become way more important than fooling the eye. Could you imagine Pollock taking part in this competition?