A group of us dog owners were having this discussion in the park last week, whilst strolling with our dogs and the question came up "Can dogs see in colour?" Some people felt sure they could not, one person said they can see three colours, another said they could see red as the predominant one and others said "Of course they can see colour. Why else would they reject certain coloured treats?"
Not much gets past a dog's nose, but what about those eyes? What colour do dogs see when they gaze soulfully up at people or ogle birds, cats and squirrels? They see a whoosing blur of movement.
Dogs do see in color, despite an old misconception, but their world still doesn't look quite like ours. While human eyes contain three kinds of color-sensing cells, dogs have just two, leaving them oblivious to red. Their lower visual acuity also makes everything look an even shade of grey and a lot blurrier.
We will never know what it's like to be a dog — especially without their noses — but doing some little tests with coloured treats proves that dogs do see colour. Try it. You will be telling everyone how your dog hates the orange ones!
Dogs are not completely color blind since they have a dichromatic colour perception. Unlike humans who have three different colour sensitive cone cells in their retina (red, green and blue) dogs have only two (yellow and blue).
This does not mean that dogs can't see green or red objects! It only means that they can't distinguish green, yellow or red objects based on their color. However, they can still distinguish a red ball from a green one if there is a difference in the perceived brightness of the two.
This and that .................
It's that time of year again when half the microwaves and car clocks in the country are suddenly commended for their accuracy and obedience, while the other half become a source of mild annoyance until March. Yep, the clocks went back an hour on the 24th October at 2 pm, which means that every night for at least the next two weeks someone will look out of the window and reminisce about the good old days of light, saying "remember when we could still see the outside at 4pm?" But the days of light are over, Shirl, at least for a few months. We need to embrace the night, and remember that good, honest people like Santa and dishonest people like burglars, can only work under the cover of darkness.
Can dogs speak? This video proves that they can say important phrases to please their owners.
That's it for this month. See you in December.
Dawn ("-")
