• Question: Do Dogs See Colours?

    Asked by lorem to Asif, Laura, Lena, Sean, Viv on 20 Mar 2012.
    • Photo: Lena Ciric

      Lena Ciric answered on 20 Mar 2012:

      We thought that they couldn’t for years, but it turns out that they can. Special cells, called cones, are situated at the back of the eye in the retina. Both dogs and humans have these cells, but dogs have fewer of them. Also, we have three different types of cone cells and dogs only have two. This means that they don’t see some of the colours we do and not so vividly.

      But they have more rod cells (these are responsible for light and dark) in their retinas than we do so they can see shades of grey that we can’t!

    • Photo: Sean Murphy

      Sean Murphy answered on 20 Mar 2012:

      Dogs actually do see color, but many fewer colors than normal humans do. Instead of seeing the rainbow as violet, blue, blue-green, green, yellow, orange and red, dogs would see it as dark blue, light blue, gray, light yellow, darker yellow (sort of brown), and very dark gray. In other words, dogs see the colors of the world as basically yellow, blue and gray.

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