• Question: When animals can't see colours the same as we do is there any colours we can't see and what colours do the animals see if they can't see colours like red and green?

    Asked by martha to Hephzi, Imogen, Jen, Jennifer, Tom on 11 Mar 2015.
    • Photo: Thomas Barrett

      Thomas Barrett answered on 11 Mar 2015:

      The eyes of both people and dogs contain special light catching cells called cones that respond to color. Dogs have fewer cones than humans which suggests that their color vision won’t be as rich or intense as ours.

      You can see the kinds of colours we think dogs can see here.
      https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/canine-corner/200810/can-dogs-see-colors

      Some birds (notable the Eagle) have a visual pigment in the cones of their retinas that absorbs UV light, allowing them to see the ultraviolet portion of the spectrum. This means they can see more things than we can. Sadly if we were to have this UV eye we would probably go blind 🙁

      The zebra fish has one more cone than we do which means it can see a whole extra primary colour. A colour we can’t even imagine because our eyes can’t see it!

    • Photo: Jen Machin

      Jen Machin answered on 13 Mar 2015:

      There are some animals that can see more (or different) colours than we can! There’s two ways this can happen: they can either see different wavelengths of light (like infra red, which we can’t see), or they can see more shades of a colour that we can already see.

      Snakes can actually see infra red, and this means they can see heat! They use this to hunt other animals. Some kinds of birds have an extra cone in their eye. Cones are cells in our eyes that allow us to see colour. Humans only have three types of cones, but some birds have 4 types. This means that they can see the same colours that we can, but a lot of extra different shades of those colours that we will never see 🙂

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