Coyotes and the color red

grumpy

grumpy

New member
Had a conversation the other day with several of my hunting buddies about how animals see color. Of course, everyone has thier own belief on this subject. But, some recent situations took this conversation in some uncharted areas.
This particular canversation started with the usual, but the question soon came up about using red lenses on lights for night hunting. Just about everyone there said they used them and they all said most animals didn't react to a red light the same way they did to a standard light. So I posed the question; if they can't see red at night, can they see it during the day? To which no one had an answer. So I pose this question to the experts here.
The other question that came up was due to some horseplay on our part with a laser bore sighter and our cats. We would run the red dot from the laser across the floor and the cats would go crazy trying to catch it. We then tried it out on the dog, mine didn't react, but the neigbors dog reacted the same way the cats did. Which brings us back to the original question and adds another one, How can the see this red light and yet not react to it at night?
A test was planned and yesterday a couple of us went out to call coyotes to see if they would react to the laser bore sighter if it was pointed in front of them. Long story short, no coyotes, but one young bobcat that reacted exactly like the domestic house cats and completely lost all caution while it tried to catch the red dot.
Now I'm not new at calling at night by any means, but I have called in everything from grey fox, red fox, coyotes, bobcats and even bear at night with little or no response to the red light we shined on them. Can they or can they not see the color red at night? If not, why have these animals reacted to the red light from the bore sighter with such abandon? Obviously I need to see a coyote react to this, and we are planning another trip, but we could have easily killed that bobcat if we had chose to.
Any ideas or thought on this subject?
 
I'm not sure what color this coyote saw but I called him in with a fawn distress sound. He was under 50 yards and focused on the call (WT). I was using the call hoping to call in a Doe on the last day of our firearm season here in Saskatchewan. I needed to turn my body nearly 90 degrees to shoot, as I slowly made the turn he glanced at me then refoucued on the call. As he took a couple more steps to the call I completed the turn, lip squeeked and put a 100 gr 6mm rem in his chest. My camera was back at the truck and as I got back to the main road a couple deer hunters when having lunch and took this picture for me. I'll stick to camo when I set out to call coyotes but this reinforces my belief that motion is much more important than color.
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When one uses his camo thinking he is invisible it probably does more harm than good. Animals,(coyotes } know the shapes in there environment. Put on camo and look like a bush where the coyote is not use to seeing a bush and he will probably bust you. I would rather sit in some existing cover with a Santa Claus suit on then sit in the more open with my best camo. that being said, camo is still part of the fun.
 
When we say an animal doesn't "see" a color, it doesn't mean anything that color becomes invisible, it just means that they can't distinguish that color from others. In the case of your red laser, the animal can still see the dot, he just may not be able to distinguish the color.

A color blind person can still see the light at a traffic signal, he just can't distinguish which color light it is (red or green).
 
Hello gentlemen. This is Steve's wife. He has asked me several times to write this down for him, but I never have had the time. He said that since this question has surfaced again, that I should share with you what little I know about the subject. I hope you don't mind.

I did a research paper on canine vision when I was at The University of Tennessee Veterinary College. We did literally hundreds of tests over a 3 month period with 27 different dogs. Here's briefly what we found:

Dogs can indeed see colors. Lots of colors. They seem to have the most difficulty with orange and bright red. These two colors seem to appear as a gray or possibly a dull white. Some dogs we tested didn't seem to be able to see orange at all, in any circumstances. Orange was definitely the most difficult color for them to distinguish. Black is very easily recognizable, as is blue and green.

I do believe that the lights you are using are very visible to the canines you are hunting. The most probable reason that they aren't startled by them is because their pupils aren't effected by the red spectrum. As with a human, the pupil doesn't react to the red light and the animal probably doesn't recognize it as a threat. The white light will cause their pupils to react and startle the animal or make them very uncomfortable with the situation.

As far as cats are concerned, I have never read any studies that have been performed with cats and color recognition. It is believed, however, that cats have the same color recognition that humans do, or possibly even moreso.

Thank you for letting me join in the fun. I hope this is of some help.

Sallye.
 
Thanks for the input Sallye. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grinning-smiley-003.gif

Hard to understand how a smushed-faced gorilla like Steve could catch an intelligent and well spoken lady like yourself, but I'm glad he did. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif
 
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Hard to understand how a smushed-faced gorilla like Steve could catch an intelligent and well spoken lady like yourself, but I'm glad he did. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif



Leon, you're killing me buddy, you're killing me....she tells me that every day the way it is. Now you're putting more fuel on the fire! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif
 
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