Kids: Are cats colorblind?
Photo: fazen
No, cats aren’t colorblind, but their color vision isn’t as discriminating as ours.
Cats probably see the world in shades of blue and yellow, much like people who are red-green colorblind. Color vision lets you detect objects, mostly stationary, against a background. Bees have great color vision, which enables them to can detect flowers from a distance.
The cat’s vision, on the other hand, has evolved to detect movement. Cats are ambush predators. They sit still and target a moving prey. That’s why your cat will pounce when its toy moves, but may not if the toy remains still.
The position of the cat’s eyes – both on the front of the head – means that cats come close to having binocular vision similar to that of humans. This binocular vision makes the cat good at judging distance.
Cats are nocturnal hunters and color vision isn’t much help at night. A cat can’t see in total darkness, but it can see better in dim light than most other animals. In bright light, a cat’s pupils contract into narrow vertical slits. But in the dark, these slits enlarge to round openings that admit a maximum amount of light. Nearly all of us have seen a cat’s eyes shining in the dark. It happens when even a tiny amount of light strikes a reflective area of iridescent green or yellow crystalline needles in the lining of the cat’s eye.
