• Question: What colour do animals see in, aznd how about a horse?

    Asked by madz to Amy, Karen, Sarah, Will on 20 Jun 2012. This question was also asked by ciaragrimesxox.
    • Photo: Sarah Martin

      Sarah Martin answered on 20 Jun 2012:

      Hi again madz the vet!

      The horse eye is the largest of any land mammal! This explains a lot about the animal’s behavior as a flight animal. It can see allmost all the way around – except for directly behind it.
      Horses are not color blind, but have two-color, or dichromatic vision. This means that they see two of the basic three wavelengths of visible light, compared to the three-color trichromic vision of most humans. In other words, horses naturally see the blue and green colors of the spectrum and the color variations based upon them, but cannot distinguish red. Research indicates that their color vision is somewhat like red-green color blindness in humans. This means that certain colors, especially red and related colors, appear more green.

      Here’s a picture of how horses would see apples – as we see them in the top two pics and as we think horses see them below.

      🙂 Sarah

    • Photo: Karen Reed

      Karen Reed answered on 20 Jun 2012:

      for animals – it depends on what animal and what kind of receptor cells they have in their eye.
      Humans have 3 kinds of colour receptors in their eye – and I learnt yesterday answering someone elses question that dogs only have 2, so they do see colours but they can see a similar number as people who are colour blind.
      (full answer I gave /strontiumj12-zone/2012/06/18/do-dogs-see-in-black-and-white/)

      As for horses – I don’t know would have to look it up but from what sarah has said it may well be similar to dogs

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