00:00 Hey guys, Dr. Mustache here at the Pet Lab.
00:03 And look over there.
00:05 It's a double rainbow.
00:07 A double rainbow all the way across the sky.
00:11 Whoa.
00:12 It's so beautiful.
00:15 But what does it mean?
00:17 Wait.
00:18 That's not the question we're going to ask today.
00:21 Today on the Pet Lab, we're asking,
00:23 what does a cat see when it looks at a rainbow?
00:25 [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:28 [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:30 Now, there's a common belief that cats are colorblind
00:33 and can only see in shades of gray.
00:35 But this isn't entirely true.
00:37 Cats' eyes have a different structure than ours do.
00:40 And that means that they see the world differently,
00:42 and in turn, see rainbows in a different way.
00:45 At the back of the eyes of complex animals,
00:47 like humans and cats, there's a structure called the retina.
00:51 The retina contains two types of cells
00:53 that are photoreceptors, rods and cones.
00:56 Rods are very sensitive to picking up images,
00:59 but they only see contrast, light and dark,
01:01 rather than colors.
01:03 These are what we use to see in the dark.
01:05 The next time that you're in a dark room
01:07 or outdoors at night without lights, pay attention,
01:09 and you'll notice you're not really seeing colors.
01:12 Cones, the other cells that we used to see,
01:14 are much less sensitive than rods,
01:16 but they provide all of the color information
01:18 that we're used to.
01:19 Most humans have millions of cone cells
01:22 that come in three varieties, which allows
01:24 us to see three types of light, red, green and blue light.
01:28 Now, cats only have two types of cones,
01:31 which means they can only see green and blue.
01:34 Now, this may seem like a small distinction,
01:36 but it's amazing how many more colors
01:38 you can see when you add one more type of cone.
01:41 Without red cones, we wouldn't just miss out on red,
01:44 but also purple, yellow, orange and more.
01:47 Now, about 1% of men have this type of color blindness.
01:50 It's called protanopia, and it's this similarity
01:54 that led to the perception that cats are color blind.
01:56 But while it may seem to us that cats are missing out
02:01 on a huge part of the color spectrum,
02:03 cats' eyes have superior rods to ours,
02:06 which means that they can see much better in the dark.
02:08 They can even distinguish between many more shades of gray
02:10 than we can.
02:11 I mean, you're not going to get a cat excited
02:13 about 50 shades of gray.
02:15 Am I right, ladies?
02:16 Cat ladies.
02:17 Now, we're not the king of the jungle
02:19 when it comes to seeing color either.
02:21 Animals like birds and butterflies
02:22 can see more colors than we can, including
02:25 some near the ultraviolet range.
02:27 And there's one species of shrimp
02:29 that has 16 types of cones.
02:31 I mean, imagine what their world must look like.
02:33 If you can't tell already, color perception
02:40 is sort of hard to explain because we don't really
02:43 have an objective view of colors.
02:45 Now, we know that different colors
02:46 can form different parts of the light spectrum,
02:49 but we don't really know if what we're seeing
02:51 is what other people are seeing.
02:52 And there's no real way to experience
02:55 what we're missing out on.
02:56 But science does point to the fact
02:59 that cats perceive rainbows differently.
03:01 We see seven colors in the rainbow-- red, orange, yellow,
03:05 blue, green, indigo, and violet.
03:07 Good old ROYGBIV, if you remember that from art class.
03:10 Cats, meanwhile, see a rainbow of blues and greens,
03:13 with gray making up the missing colors.
03:15 They also see less saturation than we do,
03:17 which means to them, colors seem less vivid.
03:20 So cats can see some colors in some of the rainbow.
03:23 Question answer, right?
03:25 Well, not exactly, because cats don't really
03:28 use their color perception all that much.
03:30 In one study, cats did learn to distinguish
03:32 between two different colors, but only
03:34 when the colors were very different,
03:36 and only after many attempts.
03:37 What does this mean?
03:42 Well, for one thing, cats don't need
03:44 to be great at seeing colors because they don't really
03:46 need to discriminate between colors in their daily life.
03:49 Although cats have the cones to be able to see some colors,
03:52 their brains aren't really trained to use this ability,
03:55 so it takes them a long time.
03:57 Cats' eyes have evolved to be very good at perceiving motion
04:00 in low light, which is perfect when you're stalking prey
04:02 at night or in a dense jungle.
04:04 So when cats look at rainbows, we really
04:07 don't know what they see.
04:08 But we do know that it's different.
04:10 Now, humans are drawn to the beauty of the world and all
04:13 the colors of the rainbow, and cats probably don't care.
04:17 And isn't that just like a cat?
04:20 Well, that's going to do it for me, Dr. Mustache,
04:22 in this edition of Pet Lab.
04:24 But before we go, we had some great responses
04:26 to our video about how do cats land on their feet.
04:28 First of all, thank you, Chris Lucia.
04:30 You're absolutely right.
04:32 Do not try this at home.
04:33 Cats are not meant to be dropped.
04:35 Also, thank you, Savannah Choi, on behalf of Jack the Cat.
04:38 He agrees.
04:39 He does look great on camera.
04:41 Now remember, if you have any questions or comments
04:43 about your pet, leave them in the comments section below.
04:46 And maybe we'll read your comment
04:47 at the end of an episode, or maybe we'll
04:48 make an entire episode based on your question.
04:51 And if you like what you saw here,
04:52 and you'd like to watch music, petities, and 24-hour puppy
04:55 cams, be sure to click the Subscribe button,
04:57 wherever YouTube has moved it, and join the Pet Collective.
05:01 See you later.
05:02 Bye-bye.
05:02 [MUSIC PLAYING]
05:05 [MUSIC PLAYING]
05:09 [MUSIC PLAYING]
05:12 (upbeat music)
Comments