Scientists in Russia and the United States have produced research that challenges one of the most common myths: all dogs are color blind. Dogs (like my puppy Luna left) can see color and use them to distinguish between items. They simply have a narrower color spectrum.

Last year, Professor Jay Neitz from the University of Washington showed that, due to one fewer “cones” in their eyes than humans, dogs cannot identify the full array of red, blue, green and yellow wavelengths created by light entering the eye. However, a dog’s two cone structure does allow them to distinguish between blue and yellow while denying them the ability to see red and green.

Now a team of researchers from the Laboratory of Sensory Processing at the Russian Academy of Sciences and confirmed and expanded on those findings. The Russians sought to determine if dogs use brightness levels to distinguish between items.

Six out of the eight dogs made the color choices between 90 and 100 per cent of the time to find meat nearby. They decided that the test showed that it is the color not the brightness that is being used by the dogs. In other words, “our results demonstrate that under natural photopic lighting conditions colour information may be predominant even for animals that possess only two spectral types of cone photoreceptors.” For the rest of us, that means dogs can see some colors.

Source: Daily Mail