• Question: do dogs see in black and white?

    Asked by jemmastacey12 to MarkF, Mark, Michael, Panos, Sarah on 16 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Panos Soultanas

      Panos Soultanas answered on 16 Jun 2010:

      Jemma,

      I think they do see in colour but some differences between the human and dog cones (the light sensory elements) means that perhaps dogs cannot differentiate very clearly between some colours. It is a bit like a colour blind human who cannot see the difference between some colours.

    • Photo: Sarah Burl

      Sarah Burl answered on 16 Jun 2010:

      Dogs see in colour as they have both rods and cones in their eyes. Cones are needed for colour vision, however they don’t see the same colours as we do as their cones are slightly different. The human eye also has more cones than dogs. However horses only see in black and white.

    • Photo: Mark Fogg

      Mark Fogg answered on 16 Jun 2010:

      Dogs see in colour. Their eyes pick up slightly different wavelengths to ours, so it would look a bit weird from our point of view, a bit like red/green colour blindness.

    • Photo: Michael Loughlin

      Michael Loughlin answered on 16 Jun 2010:

      they can’t precieve colours from green to red so they are more limited in the colours they can see…but more than just black and white
      their lowlight vision is better than ours as it their ability to respond to movement ( more rods than codes in their eye) which is good for a carnivore..

      try this for more info
      http://www.vetinfo.com/dogsee.html

    • Photo: Mark Travis

      Mark Travis answered on 16 Jun 2010:

      Had to look this one up! It was once believed that dogs only see in black and white, but it has been discovered that dogs have rods and cones in their eyes like humans so can probably see some colours. However, the colours they can see is likely to be a lot more limited to that of humans.

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