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[Joan Deutsch]

Do horses see color? One study asked four horses this question. The answer: They can definitely see the difference between blue and gray, but they had more difficulty with gray vs. red.


http://horsetalk.co.nz/2012/11/21/color-vision-horses-do-horses-see-color/#.UK_yRqV5nlI

[horsepeople2001]

yes, they see color, they also see in a size gradient. from front to back and up and down as well as from one side to the other. the equine eye is very complicated as to how they perceive and see things. for instance if your horse is looking at the ground head down position it is looking threw the lower part of the eye to see up close. if the head is up they can be looking at some thing up to a 1/4 mile or more away. they also see differently from one side to the other this is the reason a horse needs to see things with each eye to stop being spooked by some thing. they also see things sized different things that seem small to us can be huge to them depending on how close they are to the object and where it is positioned in their field of vision. the object can also be seen as blurry to them depending one which eye they see it with and if it is in front or beside them.

[kriss10]

Interesting question since you can't just ask them. The other problem is, even among humans, it is impossible to tell if what one person perceives is really the same as another. We may both recognize "blue" but what we really see may be very different. My first husband was color blind, not as bad as some (I had a coworker who only saw shades of gray), but he never would admit he was. Even after failing several color vision tests, he denied he was color blind because he saw color - he just did not perceive the colors the same as others. After we had our son, I insisted on hanging all of the baby clothes together in outfits so that he could dress him

[horsepeople2001]

from what doctors have discovered from dissecting the eye of horses. they have the same color cones as we do in their eyes. each horse will see things differently than another horses does, in part by eye size and placement as well as the internal parts of the eye and the connections to the brain all play in how a horse sees light,dark,colors,shapes and sizes of objects.

[kriss10]

from what doctors have discovered from dissecting the eye of horses. they have the same color cones as we do in their eyes. each horse will see things differently than another horses does, in part by eye size and placement as well as the internal parts of the eye and the connections to the brain all play in how a horse sees light,dark,colors,shapes and sizes of objects.

I would love to have a link to the studies you are quoting (or a book if that is where it came from). I find the whole question about vision, and the theories about what other species can see, fascinating. Many men are color blind and a lot of them don't even realize it (until they have to take a color vision test and fail). I would assume they also have cones in their eyes and yet they don't work in what is considered a "normal" manner. Even if horses have cones, it does not mean that they see color in the same manner that we do, because their brains may process the input in a differently.