Are Dogs Colorblind? Find Out the Truth

There are many common misconceptions aboutof humans do not always work against them. As
dogs, such as the belief that they will die if theya result, the dogs have night vision that is far
eat apples or that their mouths are cleaner thansuperior to humans and they are far better at
human mouths. However, some things that peopletracking movement. However, they are not able
say about dogs actually are true. One of theto see in nearly as much detail and they are able
common ideas about dogs that actually has someto detect fewer colors and shapes than humans.
truth to it is the claim that they are colorblind.When pet owners learn about the way that their
Dogs are not colorblind in the sense that theydogs actually see things, they often wonder if it
only see images in black and white. However,affects the way that they are able to play with
they do have a significantly limited color fieldtheir pet. It is true that if someone throws an
compared to what humans can see. Most of whatorange ball to their dog in the green grass, it will
dogs can see appears to be in shades of yellow,look like a yellow ball on yellow grass to the dog.
blue and violet. They are not able to see the reds,Because of this, they may have difficulty actually
greens and oranges that humans see becauseseeing the ball but they will still be able to catch it
these colors appear somewhere in their blue andbecause of their excellent motion detection skills.
yellow spectrum.There are significant differences between the
The reason that dogs have trouble seeing coloreyes of dogs and humans and these make it
can be best explained by comparing their eyes todifficult for dogs to distinguish between many
human eyes. Both human and canine retinas havecolors that humans can see easily. Although they
two types of photoreceptors, rods and cones.cannot see a lot of different colors, dogs are able
However, the human eye has more types ofto see some shades and are not limited to only
cones while the canine eye has more rods and noseeing in black and white. The differences in their
fovea, which allows humans to see with sucheyes give dogs superior motion detection abilities
sharp detail.which make up for their lack of ability to
The differences in the eyes of dogs from thosedistinguish the actual difference in colors.