High visual acuity revealed in dogs
(2017) In PLoS ONE 12(12).- Abstract
Humans have selectively bred and used dogs over a period of thousands of years, and more recently the dog has become an important model animal for studies in ethology, cognition and genetics. These broad interests warrant careful descriptions of the senses of dogs. Still there is little known about dog vision, especially what dogs can discriminate in different light conditions. We trained and tested whippets, pugs, and a Shetland sheepdog in a two-choice discrimination set-up and show that dogs can discriminate patterns with spatial frequencies between 5.5 and 19.5 cycle per degree (cpd) in the bright light condition (43 cd m-2). This is a higher spatial resolution than has been previously reported although the individual... (More)
Humans have selectively bred and used dogs over a period of thousands of years, and more recently the dog has become an important model animal for studies in ethology, cognition and genetics. These broad interests warrant careful descriptions of the senses of dogs. Still there is little known about dog vision, especially what dogs can discriminate in different light conditions. We trained and tested whippets, pugs, and a Shetland sheepdog in a two-choice discrimination set-up and show that dogs can discriminate patterns with spatial frequencies between 5.5 and 19.5 cycle per degree (cpd) in the bright light condition (43 cd m-2). This is a higher spatial resolution than has been previously reported although the individual variation in our tests was large. Humans tested in the same set-up reached acuities corresponding to earlier studies, ranging between 32.1 and 44.2 cpd. In the dim light condition (0.0087 cd m-2) the acuity of dogs ranged between 1.8 and 3.5 cpd while in humans, between 5.9 and 9.9 cpd. Thus, humans make visual discrimination of objects from roughly a threefold distance compared to dogs in both bright and dim light.
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- author
- Lind, Olle LU ; Milton, Ida ; Andersson, Elin LU ; Jensen, Per and Roth, Lina S.V. LU
- organization
- publishing date
- 2017-12-01
- type
- Contribution to journal
- publication status
- published
- subject
- in
- PLoS ONE
- volume
- 12
- issue
- 12
- article number
- e0188557
- publisher
- Public Library of Science (PLoS)
- external identifiers
-
- pmid:29206864
- wos:000417110700013
- scopus:85036670572
- ISSN
- 1932-6203
- DOI
- 10.1371/journal.pone.0188557
- language
- English
- LU publication?
- yes
- id
- 5c32a2db-69af-4d8b-a095-bf0bbca5a546
- date added to LUP
- 2017-12-18 09:16:50
- date last changed
- 2024-02-13 14:07:03
@article{5c32a2db-69af-4d8b-a095-bf0bbca5a546,
abstract = {{<p>Humans have selectively bred and used dogs over a period of thousands of years, and more recently the dog has become an important model animal for studies in ethology, cognition and genetics. These broad interests warrant careful descriptions of the senses of dogs. Still there is little known about dog vision, especially what dogs can discriminate in different light conditions. We trained and tested whippets, pugs, and a Shetland sheepdog in a two-choice discrimination set-up and show that dogs can discriminate patterns with spatial frequencies between 5.5 and 19.5 cycle per degree (cpd) in the bright light condition (43 cd m<sup>-2</sup>). This is a higher spatial resolution than has been previously reported although the individual variation in our tests was large. Humans tested in the same set-up reached acuities corresponding to earlier studies, ranging between 32.1 and 44.2 cpd. In the dim light condition (0.0087 cd m<sup>-2</sup>) the acuity of dogs ranged between 1.8 and 3.5 cpd while in humans, between 5.9 and 9.9 cpd. Thus, humans make visual discrimination of objects from roughly a threefold distance compared to dogs in both bright and dim light.</p>}},
author = {{Lind, Olle and Milton, Ida and Andersson, Elin and Jensen, Per and Roth, Lina S.V.}},
issn = {{1932-6203}},
language = {{eng}},
month = {{12}},
number = {{12}},
publisher = {{Public Library of Science (PLoS)}},
series = {{PLoS ONE}},
title = {{High visual acuity revealed in dogs}},
url = {{http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0188557}},
doi = {{10.1371/journal.pone.0188557}},
volume = {{12}},
year = {{2017}},
}