Are chickens color blind? Can somebody help us with this? 11R.I.R., 15 Black stars, 2 S.L.W., 2 B.R., 7 Araucanas, 6 White leghorns, 2 White rocks, 2 Black giants and 2 Black australorps.
Oh yes, chickens in particular, and birds in general, have quite good red-green color vision. (That's why using a red bulb or red contact lenses reduces picking, as does masking wounded areas with a black or blue salve so they can't see the redness). AFAIK they also have good yellow-blue color vision but I cannot immediately produce references or anything like that It is not infallible, but you can often get a pretty accurate idea of whether a certain kind of critter sees certain colors by noting whether those colors appear on the critter's own body, especially if those colors are used for any sort of signalling within the species (e.g. mating displays). (The main exceptions are when bright colors play no role in signalling within the species, and are 'just' an important way of advertising poisonousness to potential predators or blending in with one's environment; also, some critters such as tubifex worms are red just 'cuz you're seeing their hemoglobin-containing blood thru their skin) Pat
Almost all birds have excellent vision and can actually see more colors than humans recognize. They can see ultraviolet on top of all the other colors in the rainbow that we can see. It's actually pretty interesting, because under ultraviolet light some birds have extremely DIFFERENT patterns than the ones we normall see.