How Dogs See and Hear

Not black and white

Dogs are not colour blind in the old black-and-white sense. According to the AKC, dogs have two types of colour-sensing cones in the eye, while people have three. Dogs mainly see blues and yellows and mixes of them, and reds and greens look greyish or brownish, similar to a person with red-green colour blindness.

That is why a red ball on green grass can be surprisingly hard for a dog to spot by sight alone, while a blue or yellow toy stands out.

Built for dusk and motion

Dog eyes have more rods than cones. Rods work well in dim light and are good at picking up movement. Dogs also have a reflective layer behind the retina called the tapetum, which boosts night vision and causes that eye shine you see in photos.

The trade-off is that dogs do not see fine detail as sharply as we do. A still object far away may not register, but a squirrel twitching at the edge of the park certainly will.

Movement matters more than colour to a dog's eyes. When you play fetch, a moving toy is easy to track, but once it stops in the grass your dog will often switch to sniffing to find it.

Hearing in high definition

The AKC explains that people hear up to about 20,000 hertz, while dogs hear up to roughly 47,000 to 65,000 hertz. Dogs are most sensitive around 8,000 hertz, while we are most sensitive around 2,000 hertz, near the middle of human speech.

Dogs are also good at telling apart tiny differences in pitch. People are better at pinpointing exactly where a sound comes from, but those mobile dog ears still help a lot.

A German Shepherd's tall, upright ears can swivel toward a sound, which helps a dog focus on it. That is one reason shepherds often seem to notice a visitor long before anyone in the house does.

What this means for your dog

Household noise can feel very different to a dog. Vacuum cleaners and power tools can produce high frequencies we cannot hear, and fireworks or thunder can be overwhelming. A quiet retreat space helps.

Nova seems to hear the treat bag open from the far side of the house. Science says that is entirely believable.

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