If dogs can’t see red and green…….

[gentlearts]

Why does my dog chase red male cardinals off the bird feeder, but not the brown female ones?

[oregonwoodsmoke]

Most recent studies show that dogs do see colors. They see some colors better than they see other colors.

But even in black and white, different colors show up as different shades of gray. If they didn't, there would never have been any black and white TV.

To a dog's nose, the males more than likely smell different than the females.

[BCC_1]

Dogs are red-green colour blind. Even with that though, they will still "see" a difference between a bright red cardinal and a beige one. Red will look something like a dull, dirty yellow but beige will still just look beige.

Where it gets difficult for dogs, is that, for instance, a red ball on green grass will be the same colour to the dogs eyes. Or those Chuck-it balls that are bright orange and easy for us to spot look the same colour as the grass to a dog.

[Parnassia]

Originally Posted by BCC_1

Dogs are red-green colour blind. Even with that though, they will still "see" a difference between a bright red cardinal and a beige one. Red will look something like a dull, dirty yellow but beige will still just look beige.

Where it gets difficult for dogs, is that, for instance, a red ball on green grass will be the same colour to the dogs eyes. Or those Chuck-it balls that are bright orange and easy for us to spot look the same colour as the grass to a dog.

This. I had a fetching fiend cattledog who lost and destroyed more Chuck-it balls than I cared to replace. If she got bored retrieving them herself (didn't take long), we'd usually come across one or more of the normally loose neighborhood labs who'd take over quite happily. They'd do the fetching and my cattledog was more than happy to herd them in the process. The labs never quite figured out they were being manipulated, but being more single-minded, they didn't particularly care.

Finding out that "tennis" balls sold for dog toys are often regulation tennis play quality rejects, I started buying white regulation wool covered balls in bulk from a high powered tennis club and dying them on the stove myself. I wasn't dying them to help the dog retrieve them from roadside bushes, snow, sand, or mud. She could locate them with her sniffer. I dyed them to help ME find them! My sniffer isn't as good as my eyesight, and I didn't relish shoving my nose into who knows what searching for them. Screaming hot magenta took a lot longer to fade into nothin' special than other colors.

[Katie1]

Red are Males maybe your dog doesn't like aggressive males... esp during mating season. Had a bird feeder outside my bedroom window during spring those males would fight esp when a female was around!!