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Cat eyes are fascinating, but whether cats can see colours is not easy to answer. But the eyes of cats are more similar to the human eye than some people think.
Cats can see colours
The simple answer is: Yes, cats can see colours and do not only see black and white. Nevertheless, the four-legged friends with their big cat eyes see their surroundings differently than you do.
- The cat eye is similar to the human eye with a pupil. However, this can narrow to a slit. Cats also lack the white in their eyes, it is invisible to us. Because of this, and because cats do not blink to moisten their eyes, cat eyes appear more fixed than human eyes. But they are also mysterious and very fascinating.
- The flexibility of the pupils allows cat eyes to regulate the incidence of light better than human eyes. The pupils dilate at dusk or in the dark. Cats can therefore see better in the dark than we bipeds. This is important because cats usually hunt at night. However, when it is pitch dark, this also overtaxes a cat’s eyes and the animal has to rely on its sense of hearing and smell.
- The purring four-legged friends also have a wide field of vision. They can keep up to 220 degrees in view with their eyes.
- Cats, however, see the world less colourfully because their eyes have fewer cones for colour perception. Humans, for example, have three different colour spectrums – cats, on the other hand, only see two.
- Cats perceive red and green tones in particular differently. However, the animals can distinguish between shades of blue and yellow. This makes them similar to humans who have a green-red deficiency.
