• Question: How do people know that dogs are colourblind if dogs cannot tell us if they see colours?

    Asked by 10jlmar to Sarah on 19 Jun 2012.
    • Photo: Sarah Martin

      Sarah Martin answered on 19 Jun 2012:

      Hi 10jlmar,

      Dogs are not color blind – they see color, but less than humans. This is for two reasons:
      – dogs have far fewer cone cells in their retina (cone cells are responsible for seeing color)
      – dogs only see two primary colors – blue and yellow – whereas humans see three primary colors – red, blue, and yellow.

      Humans have 7 times higher proportion of cone cells than dogs, meaning that when dogs do see colors, they are pale or faded. However dogs have a much higher concentration of rod cells, responsible for seeing black-and-white, and also much more sensitive in lower light conditions.
      For that reason, dogs have much better night vision than people.

      🙂 Sarah

Comments

  • Photo: Karen

    Karen commented on :

    I guess people know from two types of experiments – one is looking closely at the anatomy of a dog’s eye and looking at what types of cells there are and how they work (that’s probably the main reason we know), and the other would be behvioural studies – getting dogs to recognise and maybe match different coloured objects.

  • Photo: magnesium

    magnesium commented on :

    That’s a fun fact, now I know how my dogs can see things!