Printable sheet
Dog watching a butterfly that flutters right in front of its fluffy nose. A sweet printable for kids who love animals; download the free PDF today.
Printable sheet
Free for personal and educational use
Download PDFPrintA small long-haired fluffy dog lying down, eyes fixed on a butterfly fluttering beside its nose.
Color the butterfly yellow and blue, the colors dogs see best.
Look at your finished page and imagine which colors the dog would see.
Dogs have a wider field of view than people thanks to where their eyes sit on the head.
The dog watching a butterfly in this picture is fascinated, but what color does it see? For a long time, people believed dogs saw only in black and white. Today we know that is not true. Dogs do see color, just not quite the same colors we do.
Our eyes have three kinds of color-sensing cells, while dogs have only two. That makes their vision similar to that of a person with red-green color blindness. Dogs tell blues and yellows apart easily, but reds and greens look like similar shades of brown or gray to them.
In return, dogs have other advantages. They see much better than we do in dim light, at dawn and at dusk, and they are experts at spotting movement. A fluttering butterfly grabs their attention right away, even though a still object far away is harder for them to recognize.
This has practical uses. A red ball in green grass is tough for a dog to find, while a blue or yellow one stands out. That is why so many dog toys come in those colors. And if a dog still loses the ball, it can always rely on its amazing nose.
