Animal Vision and Smell

Picture courtesy of Jay Neitz, Ph.D. - Vision Scientist Medical College of Wisconsin

These graphs illustrate the difference between the Daylight (color) vision of the Human and the Whitetail deer. Each trace reveals the profile of sensitivity of a single class of receptor. Notice that the deer has only blue peaking and green peaking receptors while the human has a third receptor that is normally referred to as “red” because it gives us the ability to see red light. This third cone makes us far more sensitive to the longer wavelengths (such as blaze orange at 605 nanometers). Notice also that the sensitivities of our blue receptor and the short side of our green receptor are less than that of the deer. This is the result of our Ultraviolet (UV) Filter that is absent in the deer. It makes us unable to see UV and far less sensitive to all wavelengths below 500 nanometers. The color bars illustrate the full range of color and brightness that each would see if deer and human both observed the spectrum in equal brightness.