• Question: why do we se in colour and dogs see in black and white ???????????????????

    Asked by to Andrew, Emma, Nancy, Michael, Elaine on 17 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Nancy Carlisle

      Nancy Carlisle answered on 17 Jun 2014:

      What colors we see depends on the receptors we have in our eyes. Certain receptors respond to different wavelengths of light. Lots of animals can see different colors that we can see- we have all adapted to our particular environment!

    • Photo: Michael Kelly

      Michael Kelly answered on 18 Jun 2014:

      I’m not sure dogs only see in black and white. There are two types of light sensing cells in the eye, rods for night vision and cones for colour and daylight vision. Both dogs and humans have a large number of rods, in humans we have 20 times as many rods as cones. This is sometimes called a rod dominated retina. Dogs also have cones, not is a small place like in humans. See this paper http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2610288/

      I do know that there is a colour sensation produced by rods in humans, its a dark blue. This is because rod signals are carried on the back of cone nerves. So think dogs have colour vision but perhaps not as well developed as in humans.

    • Photo: Emma Reid

      Emma Reid answered on 18 Jun 2014:

      Hi there!
      Scientists have recently found out that dogs can see in colour but they can’t see as many colours as humans can. Humans have cones in the retina which allow us to see red, green, blue and yellow wavelengths but dogs can only see blue and yellow. Hope this answers your question. 🙂

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