• Question: Do you think a dog would be able to see stereoscopic (red and cyan) images in 3d? (with glasses)

    Asked by 07porterj to Alastair, Emma, Hywel, Keith, Vicki on 16 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Keith Brain

      Keith Brain answered on 16 Jun 2010:

      Any animal with colour vision should be able to use two-colour 3d glasses, although the colour combination might have to be adjusted. For dogs, I did a quick Google search and found that their red/green discrimination is poor, so I don’t think that red/cyan would work very well. Blue/yellow stereoscopic filters might work better.

      The colour filter are just use to determine which eye sees which image, so any colour pair will do as long as the eye can differentiate them. This will depend on the type of “cone” cells found in the retina – the part of the eye that is sensitive to light.

    • Photo: Hywel Vaughan

      Hywel Vaughan answered on 16 Jun 2010:

      I shall have to put my hand up to this one and say I don’t know!
      As Keith said, colour filters are used to determine which eye sees which image, however this works with eyes that are trichromatic – meaning that we see red, green and blue. Dogs only have dichromatic eyes – they only see in red and blue, so how splitting their vision into the two separate colours would effect them I don’t know. Whether they would be able to correctly perceive an image in just blue or just red would be questionable. Humans have 7 times as many cone cells as dogs, so we see colours much more vividly than they do too, so it wouldn’t nearly have the same effect!

    • Photo: Alastair Sloan

      Alastair Sloan answered on 16 Jun 2010:

      I don’t think so because dogs only see red and blue colour. Keith explains it very well !

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