The popular belief has always been that little Fido can see only in black and white but recently, a study has come out proving dogs can see color. While humans have the ability to see a variety of colors, dogs can only see in two colors: blue-violet and yellow.

But why? What makes our vision so different from dogs? Well, it turns out that they have only one-tenth of color capturing cones in the back of their eyes, only letting them see in a small amount of colors. Other colors are actually completely visible to them, but they cannot distinguish colors like humans can. Veterinarians Christopher Murphy and Paul Miller have stated that dogs only see colors of biological importance to their species. So, because dogs have never had to hunt for brightly colored food, there isn’t really any reason for them to see those colors.

Even though dogs have a lack of color vision they are heavily dependent on their sense of smell. Because of this, dogs have not developed their vision to be as strong as a human.

Us humans are heavily dependent on eyesight, which is why our eyes are so complex and we have the ability to see in a wide variety of colors. A dog’s inability to distinguish colors is simply an evolutionary trait. So what they don’t have in sight, they make up for in smell and use this to find their food and survive.

Source: Animal Planet