Dog vision can allow them to recognize dogs on TV

Ever wonder about how well canine vision works, especially in relation to recognizing dogs on TV screens?

While people have an image frame rate of around 15-20 images per second to make moving pictures appear seamless, canine vision means that dogs need a frame rate of about 70 images per second to perceive a moving image clearly.

This means that for most of television’s existence – when they are powered by catheode ray tubes – dogs couldn’t recognize themselves reliably on a TV screen, meaning your pups mostly missed out on Wishbone, Eddie from Fraisier and Full House’s Comet.

With new HDTVs, however, it’s possible that they can recognize other dogs onscreen.

This news came to Dog O’Day’s attention through a BuzzFeed story.

“They probably see the new TVs just as well as they see the world in general,” Ernst Otto Ropstad, an associate professor at the Norwegian School of Veterinary Science, told Science Nordic.

“Now that modern TVs generate more frames per second, dogs can perceive the pictures as film, just like we do,” Ropstad continued. He should know – his specialty is in animal vision.

While dogs aren’t truly color-blind, having two cone cells in their retinas, they can’t see as wide a range of colors as humans can, as we have three cone cells in our retinas. Ropstad explained to Science Nordic that red, for example, would become a sort of yellowish to our canines.

Furthermore, a 2013 study found that dogs prefer screens with dogs on them to screens without dogs, and they lump all dogs – no matter what breed – into a general category of “doggishness.”

Researchers aren’t sure yet whether some breeds have better vision than others, but it seems likely, just as some breeds are more intelligent.

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