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Are dogs really color blind?

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Does our dog know my shirt is pink?

As a mother I get asked a lot of questions every day, most of which I have no solid answer for.

Yesterday, when my daughter asked me this question, I had a squidoo-ers lightbulb moment.
You see, coming up with creative squidoo lenses is the hardest part of squidoo-ing for me. Thus, my lightbulb moment.

Welcome to my first in a potentially long series of "Mom, do you know?" lenses.

Let the learning begin

Basic Vision and Color Blindness

We all grow up being told that dogs cannot see color. Is it true? Should we believe everything we are told? Let's learn together and see.

To understand best, let's review a very basic summary of how vision works.

When light enters your eye, it passes through the cornea, aqueous humor, lens
and vitreous humor. It's ultimate destination is your retina.
The retina is the light sensing structure of the eye The retina contains two types of cells, the rods and cones.
Rods handle vision in low light, cones hand color vision and detail. Cones are the one we are interested in (if we want to learn the answer to our ultimate question).

Humans have three cones which contain color-responsive chemicals (cone pigments). The three kinds of cone pigments are red-sensitive, green sensitive and blue sensitive.
Each cone contains one of these pigments so that humans can see almost any gradation of color.

Color blindness in humans occurs when one of the cones (either red or green) are missing or are not functioning properly. Called red-green colorblindness.

Why this is important?
Dogs only have two cones (humans have three), so a dog's ability to see is comparable to a human with red-green colorblindness.

The answer then? I must conclude that while dogs see more than just black, white or grey, in a technical sense, dogs are colorblind.

credit to: Mark Plonsky, PhD
How Vision Works by Carl Bianco, MD

Doggy, doggy, what do you see?

Again, this credit goes to Mark Plonsky PhD. In his article he gives his estimate of the color range your dog probably sees.

More Information

Can Dogs See Color?: By: Dave the Dogman
How Dogs See Color: By: Dana K. Vaughan, Ph.D., Dept. of Biology, University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh
More.....Can Dogs See Colors?

So, what is the answer mom?!

No, honey, the dog most likely cannot tell that your shirt is pink.

Dogs - Just for laughs

The world's most funny dog video: by 521bioapple | video info

20,592 ratings | 22,660,246 views

curated content from YouTube

Are dogs really color blind?

Does our dog know my shirt is pink?

Let the learning begin

Basic Vision and Color Blindness

Doggy, doggy, what do you see?

More Information

So, what is the answer mom?!

No, honey, the dog most likely cannot tell that your shirt is pink.

Dogs - Just for laughs

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