ASK A SCIENTIST Question: Why do animals see different than
humans? Why can't humans see in the dark? Have you ever wondered
what your dog or cat sees when he or she watches television with
you? Do they see what we see or is it something entirely
different? Until very recently, we humans were totally and
literally in the dark about what and how other animals see.
Modern science has revealed an amazing world of vision
diversity. Some animals see subtle variations in color, others
can slow motion down to speeds that rival our most advanced high
speed cameras, while still others actually detect heat
variations much like the Hubble telescope. Let's focus on a few
different species and see how remarkably differently they see
the world around them. Dogs are said to have dichromatic vision
-- they can see only part of the range of colors in the visual
spectrum of light wavelengths. Humans have trichomatic vision,
meaning that they can see the whole spectrum. Dogs probably lack
the ability to see the range of colors