In film and television, whenever the perspective of a dog is shown, the scene is usually edited to be in black, white, and grey—bright red roses look dull and dark, and fresh-cut grass seems more artificial than natural. But is this common portrayal of a dog’s-eye view true to reality? Is man’s best friend really blind to all color?
Well, you might want to call Hollywood to complain, because filmmakers have been getting it all wrong. Dogs do not see in black and white, but they are what we would call “color-blind,” meaning they have only two color receptors (called cones) in their eyes, whereas most humans have three. For humans to be considered color-blind, they must have a deficiency in their colored vision, usually the result of a defect in the production of the cones within the eye. Color blindness in humans can mean that one of the three human color receptors doesn’t function correctly, leaving some with only two working cones. This type of color blindness is known as dichromacy—alternative to the common human trichromacy—and similar to the color perception of a dog. So, technically, dogs are color-blind (in the most human sense of the word).
But if dogs are color-blind, which colors do they see, and which do they not? The color receptors in the eye work by perceiving only certain wavelengths of light. In humans, each cone perceives, roughly, the wavelengths of light that correspond to red, green, and blue-violet. By overlapping and mixing the spectrum of colors that the three human cones perceive, we are capable of seeing a wide variety of colors. In dogs, however, the two color receptors in the eyes perceive wavelengths of light that correspond to blue and yellow, meaning that dogs see only in combinations of blue and yellow. So instead of bright red roses, dogs likely see yellowish brown petals, and lively green grass looks more dehydrated and dead.
