How Do Animals See Color?
May 12 2020With our Lovely Pets Event
starting today, we thought it might be interesting to think a little
bit about how colors apply to animals – specifically, how many
colors can animals see?
Well, it’s different for a lot of different animals! As far as scientists can tell, dogs see the world in shades of yellow, blue and gray.
![](https://global.static.recolor.com/$DEV_ASSET_LOCATION/miscellaneous/Screenshot_20200512-103148_Recolor.jpg)
Cats are pretty similar, in that they see blue and yellow too – but instead of grey, they’re more like color-blind humans when it comes to other colors. So to a cat, a red apple looks green!
![](https://global.static.recolor.com/$DEV_ASSET_LOCATION/miscellaneous/Screenshot_20200512-103858_Recolor.jpg)
And rabbits? Turns out rabbits can only see blue and green, but they also have almost 360 degree vision – meaning they can see in almost every direction at once! Except for right in front of their noses, where they have a little blind spot. But that kind of makes up for not seeing so many colors, right?
![](https://global.static.recolor.com/$DEV_ASSET_LOCATION/miscellaneous/Screenshot_20200512-104343_Recolor.jpg)
Ferrets have incredible low-light or night-vision, but the domesticated ferrets we keep as pets can only detect the color red – everything else looks grey to them. That’s pretty much all they need, though, since they naturally do most of their moving around when it’s dark and colors are undetectable anyway!
![](https://global.static.recolor.com/$DEV_ASSET_LOCATION/miscellaneous/Screenshot_20200512-104646_Recolor.jpg)
What about reptiles? Well, most lizards can actually see a whole color we can’t – ultraviolet! Reptile eyes can see UV light, and studies have revealed that lizards that look very dull-colored to us – boring browns and blacks – actually have ultraviolet coloring on their bodies that we can’t see! So lizards look much more ‘colorful’ to each other than they do to us!
![](https://global.static.recolor.com/$DEV_ASSET_LOCATION/miscellaneous/Screenshot_20200512-105629_Recolor.jpg)
So while you're coloring today, take a second to think about how your pictures might look to your favorite animal - it's probably quite different from how it looks to you!