We present a surprising anisotropy in perceived object nonrigidity, a complex, higher-level perceptual phenomenon, and explain it unexpectedly by the distribution of low-level neural properties in primary visual cortex. We examined the visual interpretation of two rigidly connected rotating circular rings. At speeds where observers predominantly perceived rigid rotation of the rings rotating horizontally, observers perceived only nonrigid wobbling when the image was rotated by 90°. Additionally, vertically rotating rings appeared narrower and longer compared to their physically identical horizontally rotating counterparts. We show that these perceived shape changes can be decoded from V1 outputs by incorporating documented anisotropies in orientation selectivity. We then show that even when the shapes are matched, the increased nonrigidity persists in vertical rotations, suggesting that motion mechanisms also play a role. By incorporating cortical anisotropies into optic flow computations, we show that the kinematic gradients (Divergence, Curl, Deformation) for vertical rotations align more with physical nonrigidity, while those for horizontal rotations align closer to rigidity, indicating that cortical anisotropies contribute to the orientation dependence of the perception of nonrigidity. Our results reveal how high-level percepts are shaped by low-level anisotropies, which raises questions about their evolutionary significance, particularly regarding shape constancy and motion perception.