Do cats really see colour?
That cats’ vision is different to that of humans is pretty well-known, although perhaps not what exactly makes it different. For a long time, people believed cats see only in black and white, with the same kind of grey scale as old TVs. But that is not quite true. Cats have fewer cone cells in their eyes, the parts responsible for colour differentiation. They can detect colours in the blue/violet and yellow/green part of the colour spectrum, but something in the red/orange part just appears grey. This means that although they can detect the movement of a bird with their rod cells, they can’t really tell if it is a robin or a sparrow.
We got curious about how cats react to colour during our development of the new spirulina product line. The natural ingredient gives the food a green hue, not a colour usually associated with cat food. We wanted to make sure that this wouldn’t put cats off from eating all its added goodness. And although other researcher found that cats can see greenish colours, we are pleased to report that none of our testing cats cared!
