If you’re lucky enough to come face-to-face with a wolf, it’s hard not to be captivated by those striking eyes.

Like other canines, wolves only have blue and yellow photoreceptors (the eye cells that detect colour). That compares with our three, which gives us our red-green-blue colour vision. This means that wolves cannot see as broad a range of colours as we humans can.

(Now, before you get too cocky about that, consider that the mantis shrimp has 16 photoreceptors, can see light that we can’t even imagine AND has the strongest punch of any animal. But I digress.)

Wolves do beat us in night vision, though. Like many other animals who are active at night, they have an extra reflective layer at the back of their eye. This reflects light back through the retina, enabling them to see well in low light. If you’ve ever photographed your dog or cat using a flash, this explains why their eyes look so strange – it’s the flash bouncing off that back layer.

KMacdonald_Wolf