What color is hardest for dogs to see

Do dogs see color? 6 fun facts about how your dog sees the world

• Dogs can see certain colors, but they see the world like someone who is red-green colorblind
• Your dog also has a wider field of vision than you because their eyes are further apart.
• Dogs also have a harder time seeing long distances they have 20/65 to 20/85 vision.

There's a common misconception that dogs can only see in black and white in reality, they can see colors like blue and yellow, though their color vision is much more limited than humans.

Dogs also have some visual advantages over humans, like being able to see more clearly in the dark. Here's how dogs see color, and some other fun facts about dogs' vision.

How does a dog's vision compare to a human's?

Your eyes pick up color using a type of cell called cones in your retina. The same is true for dogs, though our cones aren't exactly the same.

• Humans have three types of cones, "which enables us to see different shades of red, blue-violet, and green," says Alison Meindl, DVM, a veterinarian, and professor at Colorado State University.
• Dogs have two types of cones that pick up blue-violet and yellow shades, says Lara Sypniewski, DVM, a professor of small animal medicine at Oklahoma State University.

This means that dogs see in a similar way to humans who are red-green colorblind. "They don't see red or green and they see everything in shades of blue and yellow," says Jay Neitz, Phd, a researcher and professor of ophthalmology at the University of Washington.

You might notice this while playing with your dog "dogs are not good at seeing a bright red or orange ball on green grass but they are good at seeing blue from all other colors," Neitz says.

Humans may have the advantage in color vision, but dogs definitely have us beat in the realm of night vision. This is because dogs' eyes have more light-gathering power than ours, Neitz says.

A dog's retina is largely composed of cells called rods, which can sense light, even in very low-light conditions, says Sypniewski.

Fun facts about dog vision

There are several other specialized skills that dogs have and a few more key ways that dogs' vision differs from humans.

1. Dogs are especially good at sensing movement. "The increased number of rods in the dog's retina also increases their ability to detect motion," Sypniewski says. This ability can help them detect small prey like squirrels.
2. Dogs have a wider field of vision than humans. Dogs' eyes are set slightly farther apart than humans' eyes, so they can see further to the side in each direction.
3. Dogs have blurrier long-distance vision than humans. A human with perfect vision has 20/20 vision, while dogs have 20/65 to 20/85. This means that "a dog must be at 20 ft. to read a letter that a human with 20/20 vision would be able to read at 65 or 85 ft.," says Sypniewski.
4. Dogs have trouble seeing things very close up. Dogs can see objects clearly if they're at least 13 to 20 inches away from their eyes, "but if the object is closer, the image may be blurry," Sypniewski says. Humans can see objects slightly closer about 10 inches away from the eye.
5. Dogs' eyes may glow brightly in flash photos. Dogs have a thin reflective layer in the back of the eye called a tapetum that increases their low-light vision. "Many owners notice this tapetum when they take a picture of their dog with a flash and see a yellowish/green color reflecting back," Sypniewski says.
6. Dogs may recognize you by your shape and motion. "If your dog recognizes you from a distance, it is not because it can see the details of your face like a human would, but rather because of your shape or the way you move," Neitz says.

Insider's takeaway

"Contrary to popular belief, dogs don't see in black and white," Meindl says. Instead, their color vision is similar to that of red-green colorblind humans.

Dogs also have certain visual skills that humans lack, like increased night vision, a wider range of view, and a sharp eye for motion.

If you have concerns about your dog's vision or if you notice they are having difficulty seeing, call your primary care veterinarian for a thorough eye examination, says Sypniewski.

"Loss of vision over time is common in the aging dog as it is in the human, but any abrupt changes should be evaluated by your veterinarian as soon as possible," Sypniewski says.

A Dogs Perspective: What Colors Do Dogs See and Like?

Its only natural for a dog owner to wonder exactly what their highly adored companion sees when he glances toward a field of freshly cut grass or curls up in front of the television. Do dogs see the same colors as humans? It turns out that canine reality is very different from human reality when it comes to the hues we see.

Why should humans be curious about the colors that dogs see? Many dog owners like to get inside the mind of a dog to be able to pick out toys and other items that appeal to a dogs color vision. Understanding the color vision of dogs can also be useful when training dogs to respond to or retrieve objects.

Take a look at what we know about which colors dogs see best, which colors dogs like, and what owners can do to maximize that knowledge.

The First Order of Business: Debunking the Biggest Myth About How Dogs See Color

For years, people have been repeating themyth that dogs are completely color blind.Ifthat were true, it would mean that dogs could only see the world represented in black, white, and some gray tones. However, itsnotthe case at all. Dogs absolutely do see in color. However, that doesnt mean that they see in thesamecolors as humans.

What Colors Can Dogs See?

While dogs arent color blind, they do have a much more limited scope of perceivable colors than humans. This is simply the case because human eyes and dog eyes are composed in different ways. As you may know, the human eye has three different color receptors located inside the retina. For dogs, onlytwo color receptorsare located in the retina. As a result, dogs see fewer colors than humans.

So, which colors do dogs see? As far as we know, dogs can only perceive shades of blue, yellow, and gray. Theres also pretty strong speculation that the colors dogs do see appear farless intensethan they do to the human eye. Of course, nobody can actually confirm that without asking a dog. Heres abreakdownof what a human seesversuswhat a dog sees:

As you can see, a dogs color perception creates something of a parallel world compared to what the human eye sees. However, a dogs ability to see a tapestry of colors makes them far from color blind. This still leaves the question open regarding which specific colors dogs are most attracted to in their daily lives.

The Big Surprise: They Dont Love Red as Much as We Think They Do

Owners often gravitate toward red toys and objects when shopping for dogs because they assume that red will pique the interest of a playful canine. They also assume that it will be easier for a dog to find a red object that has been tossed in the grass. The reality is that dogs have a very hard time seeing red. A red toy that appears very vibrant to a human will come across as a shade of brown, gray, or black to a dog.

Its a similar situation for the very bright shade of orange used for many dog toys. Designed to create a high-alert, high-contrast look, orange toys come across as being a shade of dull or brownish gold. The irony is that choosing objects that are red or orange may actually make itharderfor your dog to distinguish between the grass and the toy you are tossing back and forth.

Of course, red and orange toys offer the human involved a benefit because they are very easily detected by the human eye. That means that you may not have to walk away from red and orange completely if you simply want to choose toys that you wont lose in the grass.

The Colors Dogs Do Like: Blue and Yellow

Blueandyelloware the two colors that dogs tend to gravitate toward. The simple reason why is that these are the two colors that dogs can distinguish easily.

The benefit of focusing on blue and yellow toys for dogs is that your dog will have an easier time identifying these objects. That means that a dog can enjoy retrieving objects because they will be able to spot these easily identifiable colors against backgrounds that consist of other colors that are muted by a dogs vision.

In fact, switching to blue and yellow toys and objects is a good idea if youve always had the impression that your dog is simply bad at retrieving objects that are right in front of his eyes.

A Colorful Tip for Dog Owners

This final tidbit regarding dogs and color vision is something that dog trainers have known for years. In fact, this tip is a common practice in the world of professional dog agility, which I used to compete in.

The key to getting your dog to follow your lead when playing or learning tricks is towear clothing with contrasting patterns. The reason for this is that solid colors can cause you to blend in with all of the background colors that surround you from a dogs perspective. Contrasting colors allow the movements and signals youre making to really stand out.

Final Thoughts

In conclusion, its really quite incorrect to say that dogs are color blind. However, their two-cone retinas see fewer colors than the three-cone retina of the human eye.

We can also pretty safely say that the colors dogs do see are less vivid than what the human eye sees.

Ultimately, going against the instinct to use red and orange objects with dogs is the first step to correcting color misconceptions when training or playing with dogs.

The last word is that blue and yellow are the two colors that dogs are most attracted to simply because they are easily identified.

Read Next: What Colors Do Cats Like or Are They in Fact Color Blind?

What Colors Do Dogs See?

Have you ever wondered whether your dog could see (and appreciate) the striking pink or nuanced teal color of a new toy? Humans on TikTok are using a dog vision filter to help answer this question. With the filter on, youll see the world in shades of blue, yellow and graythe only colors your pup can perceive.

But is this really how our furry friends see the world? Not exactly, experts saytheres way more to your pets vision than color perception.

Scientists once thought dogs saw only in black and white. The idea took off in the public imagination in the 1940s, when optometrist Gordon Walls published his influential book The Vertebrate Eye and Its Adaptive Radiation, in which he claimed that dogs could only weakly see color, if at all. The myth was finally debunked in 1989 when ophthalmologist Jay Neitz, then at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and his colleagues discovered that canines could see blues and yellows but not reds and greens. Some humans, about 8 percent of men and 0.5 percent of women, are similarly red-green color-blind.

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It turns out that dogs possess two types of color-sensing receptors, called cones, in their retinas. This makes them similar to most mammalsincluding cats, cattle and pigsand unlike humans, who have three cones.

Our work has had a big influence, and lots of people now understand what color vision in dogs really is, says Neitz, who is now an ophthalmology professor at the University of Washington.

But to really understand how dogs see the world, we need to move beyond color, says Sarah-Elizabeth Byosiere, an animal behaviorist and former director of the Thinking Dog Center at Hunter College. While a green or red ball lying on grass would not stand out easily to your pet, it might challenge them to identify it by its other featuressuch as its movement, shape and the way it reflects light, Byosiere says. That challenge could either be enriching or frustrating. It all depends on an individual dogs behavior, she says.

If youre really trying to imagine the world through the eyes of your dog, you should picture everything a lot blurrier. Most dogs have 20/75 vision, meaning that they must be 20 feet away from an object to see it as well as a human with clear vision who is standing 75 feet away.

Everything looks clear and detailed in those [TikTok] videos, but it wouldnt look quite as clear to dogs, Neitz mentions.

But unlike humans, who see very poorly in low light, canines have evolved to see well in both daytime and nighttime conditions, explains Paul Miller, a veterinary ophthalmologist at the University of WisconsinMadison. Though dogs have fewer color-sensing cones than humans, they have more rods, the cells that help with night vision. They even have a unique structure in their eyes called the tapetum lucidum, a mirrorlike membrane that allows them to see in six times less light than humans can. The tapetum, which some other animals, such as cats and cattle, also possess, sits behind the retina and reflects light back onto it, giving the receptors a second chance to gather more visual detail. Its also the reason your pets eyes glow in photos and in the dark.

Also important for dogs perception is their sense of smell, which is 10,000 to 100,000 times more powerful than that of an average human. This is as true for chihuahuas and pugs as it is for bloodhounds. While humans have about five million smell receptors, dogs possess up to a billion and can communicate with one another with chemical signals. They can pick up odors as far as 12 miles away.

And canines mighty sense of smell is inextricably linked to how they see the world. A study published last year in the Journal of Neuroscience revealed that canines brain has a direct connection between their olfactory bulb, which processes smell, and their occipital lobe, which processes vision. This integration of sight and smell had not been observed before in any animal species, the authors stated.

The results raise the question of whether dogs sense of smell is orienting their sight, Miller says. Its pretty wild, adds Miller, who was not involved in the study. They [may be able to] smell in 3-D.

So while humans may be attuned to the aesthetics of color, dogs simply arent, Neitz says. Ive had dogs all my life. And I never really felt like, Oh, my God, my poor dogs world is limited from a color vision standpoint, he says. They live in a very rich olfactory world that humans cant appreciate, Neitz adds.

When it comes to buying toys for our canine companions, we dont always have to select the two colors they can see: yellow and blue. Byosiere recommends getting one red and one blue toy to enrich your pets play. You may want to throw the red one on the green grass so that your pup uses its nose and then throw a blue one so that it uses its eyes.

These animals are not deprived in any way, Byosiere says. Its just that they just see the world in a different way.