Dog Vision: How Do Dogs See the World?

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Dog Vision: How Do Dogs See the World?

lil rascal shih tzu 300x225 Dog Vision: How Do Dogs See the World? A dogs vision can be difficult to imagine. It’s easy to just assume that dogs see the world just as humans see the world. This is a long way from the truth. Your dogs vision is quite different than our vision.

Perspective and vision

One of the first things to take into consideration is that a dog’s proximity to the ground compared to humans is drastically different. Just try it, get down on all fours and try and view the world from about 8 inches of the ground. This alone can help you start to see the drastic differences between a dog’s point of view and yours.

A dogs vision also differs from humans in that dogs can see and focus on things that are near, but objects that are closer than a couple of feet are fuzzy. Dog’s acute sense of smell and touch help them to make up for this shortcoming. Dogs simply can’t see things that are close like humans can, this is why dogs sniff anything and everything that is near them.

Color

How a dog sees color also differs greatly from how humans see color. Dogs can indeed see color but they see fewer colors than humans. Where humans can see things in a rainbow of color. These colors include: Violet, Indigo, Blue, Green, Yellow, Orange, Red, and many shades of all these colors. A dog’s color vision would be like this: Violet, Indigo, Blue, Yellow, Yellow (repeated intentionally), and Red Furthermore, Orange, Yellow, and Green all look the exact same to a Dog but a dog can distinguish those colors from Purples, Blues, and Reds. The color Blue-Green will cause the dog to see white, however, a canine can see the differences between Violet, Indigo, and Blue with competence.

Dogs & Motion

Movement is another aspect of a dog’s ability to see things. A dogs vision is similar to humans when it comes to seeing a non-moving hidden critter in a tree, but if it is moving and at a medium speed he will be at his best. Like playing with a tennis ball that is green and the green grass… No problem.

In some aspect a dogs seeing is similar to the seeing ability to humans, although dogs have an acute sense of hearing and smell that helps them excel – so don’t expect your dog to see the world the same way you do.

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