What Colors can Cats See? Let’s dive in.
Cats may not have human-level color vision, but they have an incredible knack for picking up on rapid, minute movements across a vast field of view. In addition, they have a special ability to see in the dark, which makes them great hunters at night.
Bright crinkle balls, fluffy toys, and laser pointers. These brightly colored toys may not be capitalizing on the fact that cats see colors in the real world. Anyone who has ever shared their home with a fluffy feline knows how much fun it is for cats to play fetch, pouncing, and catching. Their reflexes allow them to nip at pesky flies or seize your ankles as you rise from your slumber. A cat’s natural tendency is not to choose a preferred toy only on the basis of its color.
How Can We Tell That Cats Can’t See Different Colors?
We don’t know what colors a cat is drawn to, but we do know that cats are one-of-a-kind creatures with incredible eyes! The amazing things that a cat’s eyes can see and do have just recently been the subject of fascinating investigation. We now have a better idea of what a cat’s eyesight is like because to research that has used visual simulations. To further investigate if felines, for example, are colorblind, experiments have used both food and color panels. A food incentive can be obtained by the animal’s preference for one color over another.
What Colors Can Cat’s see?
Do cats have a preferred color vision system? We know that cats can see a variety of colors. The two cones that cats use to perceive color allow them to see light in the blue-violet and yellow-green spectrums, but not the red-orange spectrum. So, just like dogs, cats mostly perceive things in a variety of gray, blue, and yellow tones; however, some researchers have speculated that cats might also detect certain green tones.
So, that laser pointer you use to constantly annoy your cat (seriously, choose another toy!) isn’t the best choice for playing with it. It is quite unlikely that your cat perceives the intensity of the red light, preferring instead to focus on its rapid, erratic movement. And it’s annoying that they can’t seem to stop chasing an unreachable goal.
Explaining Colorblindness
The capacity to perceive colors is unrelated to color blindness; rather, it describes the degree to which one can (or cannot) differentiate between different hues. It’s not unusual for people to have trouble telling green from red. After an eye injury or sickness, some people have trouble seeing subtle color differences or comparing different hues. Colorblindness is to blame for this. The eye itself is not a problem for cats.
Two kinds of visual color receptors, called cones and rods, are present in the eyes of both cats and humans. During the day, the cones are responsible for vision and color perception. Night vision and peripheral vision (the capacity to see in all directions) are rod-related concepts. Light of different wavelengths are detected by each cone. Because of their three cones, humans are able to perceive light over the entire spectrum. The light spectrum that cats are able to perceive is limited since their eyes only have two cones.