www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2017/11/08/dogs-red-green-colour-blind-research-indicates/
This is interesting (to me) because my two (and a bit) year-old Beauceron's favourite toy is his red Kong-type ball.
He even goes to sleep wivvit in his north & south but, I've seen him go straight past it when he's bin looking for it outside on the grass, man, or on the gravel drive.
I was a'thinking along the lines that he was going blind at one time, although he can spot (smell?) an Ed Miliband (bacon job) at 50 paces so, I'm quite relieved to have read this article.
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I always thought this was known to be the case. I understood that most mammals other than monkeys and apes are colour blind, our distant ancestors shrew like ancestors were nocturnal and colour vision is not much use at night. Monkeys etc seem to have possibly evolved the ability to see in colour when they took to eating vegetables and fruit. It's quite handy knowing what is ripe!
Interestingly birds have very good colour vision, probably for the same reason.
As for your dog I don't think being colour blind would stop him actually seeing the red ball. How old is the beast?
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>>As for your dog I don't think being colour blind would stop him actually seeing the red ball. How old is the beast?
He is about 2.5 years old now. His red ball means the world to him, and I mean *The World*. We've tried hiding it from him ... to give us a little peace but, he's not happy with that at all.!!
Ive seen him run around outside looking for the ball and run right past it at times. I've tested his eye sight in my own little way and he's certainly not blind, although I would'nt be surprised if he was partially sighted.
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I guess the dog experts will be along shortly but does he see the ball when it is moving I.e rolling along the ground? How does he behave in an area he has never been to before?
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Its been known for ages that dogs see the world basically in semi monochromatic blue, yellow grey kind of spectrum.
Dogs are excellent at seeing and spotting moving objects, but very very poor at sighting stationary objects, which is where the nose comes, providing so much information at close quarters on a search, that they go semi blind to process it all.
Last edited by: Zero on Wed 8 Nov 17 at 10:09
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Yep, dogs will prioritise the nose when looking for something they know so may occasionally seem to run past, say, a ball that we would think they should have seen.
I often take a pink tennis ball to throw when the grass is long as it is easier for me to see though I am sure it makes little difference to the dog.
Our dog also loves frisbees (rings with a hole in the middle) and seemingly can actually count them, if we throw up to five Frisbees he will pick one up and then drop it on the next one before putting his nose through the top one and grabbing the bottom one so as to pick up both, he then puts the two Frisbees on top of another one and nuzzles them together before again putting his nose through the top two and grabbing the bottom one and picking up all three - and so on until he has five, at which point he seems to know that he has all five without further hunting around to make sure that there aren't any that he has missed.
Re colours, he will often favour a particular Frisbee and not always the same one and knows which one it is despite the all being similarly battered and similarly covered in his slobber so must recognise them by shade if not colour.
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>>Our dog also loves frisbees (rings with a hole in the middle)
I've tried the ole frisbees but neither dog shows much interest in them. A proper black Kong ball is another matter but, they bounce a bit too much!!
Cody the English Pointer doesn't really play much at all really - he sleeps a lot but has a good run orf lead in wooded and open areas 4 times per week.
Cody has a 'good' nose, being he is a gun dog, he's even chased a deer a few times recently, but never caught up with it, thankfully.
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>>does he see the ball when it is moving I.e rolling along the ground?
Oh yes, he is eagle-eyed in that respect.
How does he behave in an area he has never been to before?
I never take his ball with me when I take him out for walkies. He is a 'different' dog than any I've had before.
He did have 2 x some sort of seizures when he was younger but he has a good appetite and what comes out the other end is, um, OK, plus he's got bags of energy so I don't worry about him too much.
>>Dogs are excellent at seeing and spotting moving objects, but very very poor at sighting stationary objects,
Ah, that explains a lot about said mutt actually.
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It's fascinating observing what things different animals can do, see, smell, etc.
Hens for example can count their chicks, and fuss about anxiously if only five are accounted for when there should be six. But having located it and found it to be dead, they are instantly satisfied, and seem to redefine it as a non-chick.
We have little mouse toys for our pair of growing kittens. They (the mice) come in packs of different colours, but they much prefer the brown ones over red or blue. They drown the coloured ones in their water bowl, but run off growling with the brown ones and hide them under furniture.
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Best toy I've found for my Pointer is: www.wilko.com/dog-toys/talking-babble-ball-medium/invt/0303588
I sent one to my sister too for her mini Schnauzer. I wouldn't let my Beauceron anywhere near it because he would shut it up BIG time!
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Maybe the red/green colour blindness in dogs is the reason you don't see many of them driving.
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>>Its been known for ages that dogs see the world basically in semi monochromatic blue, yellow grey kind of spectrum.
I don't doubt you, but a serious question, how do they know?
Last edited by: No FM2R on Wed 8 Nov 17 at 14:11
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>> >>Its been known for ages that dogs see the world basically in semi monochromatic blue,
>> yellow grey kind of spectrum.
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>> I don't doubt you, but a serious question, how do they know?
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Ask them?
Sorry, it's a serious question, it's the design of the eyes and the light receptors, the cones and rods, the cones are colour receptors and dogs have fewer than us IIRC though more cones so can detect contrast in lower light.
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How does that help us to know which colours that they can see? Or is that a matter of design also?
Seems relevant.....
Scientist: Finally we have taught a dog morse code!
Dog: [tap-tap-tapping]
Reporter: Wow what did he say?
Scientist: "Woof".
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...does it mean Z's dog won't be able to see his new car?
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Probably means it chose the colour.
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>> Probably means it chose the colour.
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...or that Z is also colour-blind.....
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Its official, the V5c will state "Bronze"
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That was nice of them. Who knew the DVLA was considerate of people's reputations.
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>> Its official, the V5c will state "Bronze"
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....against the owner?....
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>> Its official, the V5c will state "Bronze"
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Yes, that's "Geriatric Beige", isn't it?
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I seem to remember one of the Dragons Den millionaires calling it "Jewish Racing Gold"
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>> that's "Geriatric Beige", isn't it?
Better than green-eyed monster green? blackcloudvapor.com/wp-content/uploads/green-eyed-monster1.jpg
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>> How does that help us to know which colours that they can see? Or is
>> that a matter of design also?
>
As I understand it the reduced number of cones means a reduced abiilty to discern different colours, though whether it means they see some colours as grey and others more as we do, or whether it's a matter of seeing a generally less saturated picture, I'm not sure.
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you test colour spectrum perception in dogs the same way you do in humans. The only difference is to provide appropriate response mechanism. A human can tell you, you provide a way for the dog to respond.
as for why? its very useful to know what they can see if you wish to shape behaviours
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>>you provide a way for the dog to respond.
That was the point of my question really, how do you get the dog to respond reliably?
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>> That was the point of my question really, how do you get the dog to
>> respond reliably?
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...do you think they're all on a mass wind-up?
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>> >>you provide a way for the dog to respond.
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>> That was the point of my question really, how do you get the dog to
>> respond reliably?
pavlovs dog experiment extended. get the dog to press various colour buttons against various colour backgrounds, or find various colour things in various colour backgrounds.
As i know from training a a dog in scent discrimination (needs to pick up a cloth with a certain scent on it from 10 other decoys) you have to be careful you dont contaminant the experiment and allow the dogs scent to take over
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> (needs to pick up a cloth with a certain scent on it from 10 other decoys)
In competition, does the "certain scent" change each time, or is it a constant? Is it a scent familiar to the dog?
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depends on the competition.
The judge has two cloths with her/his scent on. Judge gives you one, the other gets put somewhere into a pattern with others. some of the others get decoys scents.
You introduce the scented cloth you have to the dog, then send it to find the other.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUwHNcSNLYU
The trouble you have training this at home, is trying to keep all your scent cloths uncontaminated. The way we work round this is to train in groups, and swap sets of scent cloths with each other for training.
I have also trained the dog on tracking, she can now do an 800 metre 4 hour old track, ie a route that someone walked 4 hours ago.
Scent is becoming a sport on its own, leading up to competitions in large warehouses where they hide things, the dog has to find, Its good fun because the old bill with their dogs enter as well.
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You mean the crufts one, actually the first dog was rubbish, would have lost a shed load of points.
Teaching a dog to track is peanuts compared to teaching the dog to discriminate and retrieve and return in a confident stylish efficient manner.
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Do the dogs enjoy it? They look like they do.
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Depends on how its trained. My dog loves it because its been trained in a positive manner, some dogs I have seen look sh scared of making a mistake tho and I know why that could be.,
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How can you be certain a dog is pleased or enjoying something? Mightn't that just be projecting human attributes and expectations?
I seem to remember ages ago all the stuff about chimpanzees "enjoying" tea parties was debunked, and we only assumed they liked flicking ice cream about because that's what children would like to be allowed to do.
How do you know a dog isn't simply doing what it knows pleases its pack leader - you?
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Body language. If my dog wasn't happy and enjoying it, it would be doing it in a sullen and cowed manner.
As for pack leader theories in domestic dog / home situations, thats stoneage thinking.
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>>
>> As for pack leader theories in domestic dog / home situations, thats stoneage thinking.
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I disagree, a male puppy will as it grows aspire to be top dog and will be unruly if it is allowed to be top dog, though if he is well trained he will understand that he is not top dog, will probably see a male in the household as top dog instead and will be content and well behaved - as a rule ...
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>> How do you know a dog isn't simply doing what it knows pleases its pack
>> leader - you?
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Tha a bit of a philosophical point. What's exactly is pleasure?
Doing what you know pleases someone else usually provides human beings with a positive feeling. Presumably there are benefits to the behaviour and the feeling of "pleasure" has evolved to reinforce this behaviour.
Presumably dogs, being social creatures too have evolved a similar behaviour and reward system but it is of course impossible to know whether a dogs feelings are in any way similar to our own. Come to that it is impossible to know whether two humans have th same feelings or even see the colour red or hear sounds in th same way.
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At the end of the day, its an animal. Carrot and stick applies. Gets tricky however if you don't use a stick.
And it shows in how they work, you can tell a stick dog, you can tell a carrot and stick dog, a carrot dog really stands out.
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>> At the end of the day, its an animal. Carrot and stick applies. Gets tricky
>> however if you don't use a stick.
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Hmm, we certainly don't have to take the stick approach with our dog, neither is he particularly motivated by food so the carrot approach is not really applicable, rather he has respect and will accordingly go with the flow and do as we wish, and enjoy the attention he gets for being a great dog.
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>>neither is he particularly motivated by food so the carrot approach is not really applicable
Maybe you're using the wrong type of carrot .. my two could even be 'persuaded' to vote Labour, for a mouthful of chicken skin or a spoonful of coconut oil
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>> Hmm, we certainly don't have to take the stick approach with our dog, neither is
>> he particularly motivated by food
you are taking carrot as a food stuff literally. Every dog has a trigger, it may or may not be food, but it has one.
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Come to that it is impossible to know whether two humans
>> have the same feelings or even see the colour red or hear sounds in the
>> same way.
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Perhaps it doesn't actually matter how precisely they are viewing them, if their behaviour corresponds to an appropriate distinction between different sounds or colours?
I might see red and green as different colours to how you see them, but we both can respond to traffic lights correctly.
There is an experiment where someone wears spectacles that make everything look upside down. After an adjustment period, their brain flips its settings and everying looks the right way up (until they take the glasses off :) )
Perhaps if instead the glasses switched all the colours over, after a while the subject might see everything normally?
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>>There is an experiment where someone wears spectacles that make everything look upside down
Ere tis: www.theguardian.com/education/2012/nov/12/improbable-research-seeing-upside-down
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"that make everything look upside down"
The eye does that already. The brain flips it back.
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>> "that make everything look upside down"
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>> The eye does that already. The brain flips it back.
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Quite true ...
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We think the brain flips it back, but who knows, the whole world could be upside down. Physics could be a whole 180 degrees out.
Last edited by: Zero on Thu 9 Nov 17 at 16:10
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Used to be a pub called The World Turned Upside Down in the Ole Kent Road.
My brother quite regularly exited said boozer upside down.
:}
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Dogs are red-green colour blind - CGNorwich
