Fact Vs. Fiction

TRUE or FALSE? Dogs can only see in black and white.

FALSE! This is one I've heard all my life, and chances are you have too. Truth be told, even Veterinarians believed this to be true for a long time! While its true that dogs see much more grey than we do, they do see in some color! The parts of the eye that enables us to see the color spectrum are called cones. Humans have 3 types of cones in our eyes that make us percieve different shades of blue, red, green & yellow. Dogs, however, only have 2 types of cones, which makes them able to only perceive hues of blue and yellow, and reds and greens are indistinguishable.

Before you start to become saddened that dogs will never be able to know when it's safe to cross at a stoplight, this type of vision does have some advantages! For instance, because dogs are able to perceive gray hues better they are able to see in much dimmer light than us! They also are able to detect motion much better than humans. They can also see flickering light better than us, which means when they watch TV they see a series of moving frames instead of the continous movement on screen that we see (which could be a benefit; look how happy dogs are not watching TV! They don't have to stress over how much better than them the dog on TV looks!). Below is an image of that humans see compared to what dogs see. To a dog the paired images would look exactly alike!