Question: do dogs see in black and white?

Karen Reed answered on 18 Jun 2012:

Hiya beth, I didn’t know the answer to this but felt compelled to look it up (for you and me) as its a good question. I’ve just learnt that dogs can see colours, but not as many as humans. They can see a similar number as people who are colour blind, so they can still see some but have difficulties with others, e.g. red which would look dark brown, grey or black to them.
The way our vission works is that we have cells in the backs of our eyes that are sensitive to different wave lengths (or colours) of light. The cells are called cone cells and we have 3 different sorts – each sesitve to different colours. Dogs and people who are colour blind only have 2 differnt types of these cone cells, so don;t have such a big range of colours that they can see.
Hope that helps