Are Dogs Color Blind?

You buy your dog a bright red ball but then remember—aren’t dogs supposed to be color blind? For decades, conventional wisdom held that dogs saw everything in shades of grey and brown. But is that red ball really a dull blob, or can your dog spot the colorful hues in the blanket you tuck around him?

The truth is that a dog’s ability to see color and sharpness is mixed. Dogs can see some colors on the spectrum. But they lack red and green cones present in the human eye. That means the bright green grass he’s racing across looks more like straw. The bouncing red ball is a muddy brown. It’s ironic, because the most popular colors for dog toys are red and orange.

The good news: your dog’s color vision isn’t limited to the dreary tones of a rainy day. Russian scientists discovered in 2013 that dogs can see a spectrum of blue, violet and yellow hues. Yellow, especially, tends to pop. This may account for the popularity of yellow tennis balls, which most dogs can’t resist. 

Blurry in Daytime, Sharper by Night

 Dog vision is different from human sight in other ways: 

• The world is blurry to dogs in bright light. Peak human vision is 20/20, while most dogs’ visual acuity is about 20/75. This means a dog must be 20 feet away from an object to see it as well as a human standing 75 feet away. This can vary—Labradors are bred to have excellent sight, so they can be used as seeing-eye dogs.    
• Your dog can spot an intruder in the yard at night when you notice nothing. Why? Dogs evolved over time to be nocturnal hunters. They have keen senses to detect movement, even in the dark, and to see well in twilight. Dogs have an abundance of rods in their retina, improving night vision.  

Dog Superpowers Make Up the Difference  

Dogs use other “superpowers” to compensate for their relatively poor daytime vision:  

1. They sense vibrations. Those whiskers that drip water from the dog bowl? They are used to detect vibrations in the air which can tell them how far away an object is and how fast it’s coming near.  
2. Their sniffing powers are legendary. Your dogs’ sense of smell is greater than yours by orders of magnitude—10,000 to 100,000 times more acute. According to Michael Nappier, a doctor of veterinary medicine, a dog could smell a half-teaspoon of sugar in an Olympic-sized swimming pool. 

In short, your dog interprets the world with senses that are different than yours.  But human and dog senses complement each other, part of a great partnership that has lasted around 14,000 years.