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Colors?
Dear Dr. Berg,
Can dogs see colors?
I’ve heard that they only see black and white.
R. W, Wilmington
Dear R. W.,
I recently had a discussion about just this subject with a
veterinarian friend of mine, Dr Joe Tuckosh, who has been specializing in
veterinary ophthalmology for over 25 years.
He confirmed what I had heard---that most people believe that dogs CAN
see colors, but that they just cannot see them very well.
The reason for this has to do with the makeup of the thin
layer that lines the back of the eyeball, the retina, which reacts with light
and allows dogs to see. Vision involves
cells called rods and cones. The rods
send black and white images to the brain, while the cones allow us to see
color. Most of the cells within a dog’s
retina are rods, so that it is believed that what dogs see is mostly in black
and white.
The higher population of rods in a dog’s retina also allows
them to see better in the dark than a human, since it takes less light to
excite the rods than it does to excite a cone.
In addition, most dogs have a shiny layer along the back of the eye that
reflects light, increasing the efficiency of vision in low light
conditions. It is this shiny layer that
makes a dog’s eyes “glow” in the dark when you shine a flashlight into their
eyes.
I find it amusing that dog food manufacturers go through
such trouble to color their products so that they appeal to humans when most
dog’s, because of poor color vision, cannot tell the difference.
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