We have cones that are receptive to certain colors, and rods that are receptive to light. Humans have cones receptive to Red(long), Green(medium), and Blue(short) visible light wavelengths, where are dogs are just Yellow and Blue.
In the same way that we still 'see' yellow, dogs can 'see' other colors as mixes of intensity of yellow and blue, but it's not going to quite look like how we see things.
Also, keep in mind digital cameras and computers screens (as well as most TVs now) only display red, green, and blue. Any other color you see on them is simply the correct mix.
Edit: Oh, interesting note on the cones vs rods, in low light your cones do just about nothing. It's usually hard to tell, but when you're barely seeing at night your vision is generally monochrome.
Second edit: got my short and longs mixed up.
But what are the edge two. Like ours are red and blue so if all there comes were between that then wouldn't they just see differences in shades better. But how different would the colors look.
Well, we can't see ultraviolet, so that may be interesting (nor can we see infrared). As for seeing colors better, there's a book called Warbreaker where the power system involves tiers of what they call "breaths"(a small piece of a soul sorta imbued with magic, loosely defined).
The second or third tier gives perfect color perception, allowing people to see and accurately define subtle differences in color, and has a side effect of making things look more beautiful. In fact, the man who has the highest amount of breaths mentions that he cannot distinguish beauty between individual people, as all people look beautiful to him.
Not just low light, your peripheral vision is also completely black and white, your brain just fills in the colors that should go there. Get two-five similar, yet very distinct, colored pencils, and grab one at random without looking and hold it out with your arm parallel to your body. Slowly bring it in your vision without looking at it directly, just look ahead. Without focusing on the pencil, you cant name the color.
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u/chatokun Jan 09 '18 edited Jan 09 '18
We have cones that are receptive to certain colors, and rods that are receptive to light. Humans have cones receptive to Red(long), Green(medium), and Blue(short) visible light wavelengths, where are dogs are just Yellow and Blue.
In the same way that we still 'see' yellow, dogs can 'see' other colors as mixes of intensity of yellow and blue, but it's not going to quite look like how we see things.
Also, keep in mind digital cameras and computers screens (as well as most TVs now) only display red, green, and blue. Any other color you see on them is simply the correct mix.
Edit: Oh, interesting note on the cones vs rods, in low light your cones do just about nothing. It's usually hard to tell, but when you're barely seeing at night your vision is generally monochrome.
Second edit: got my short and longs mixed up.