Colour sight and daffodils

Bodshi

Bodshi

Well-Known Member
Apr 23, 2009
7,845
4,874
113
Yorkshire
I'm sure my RI told me that horses can see every colour except yellow. If that's the case why is my horse scared of daffodils? On two separate occasions we've almost fallen prey to first a random bunch of miniature daffodils growing on the bank of a ditch (on this occasion my horse very nearly put my friend and her horse into the ditch in his panic and haste to escape from the frightful things - much to the bemusement of the other two horses with us) and secondly to a row of daffodils that we pass all the time on the grass verge, but which have now very inconsiderately decided to flower.

Surely that means the horse CAN see yellow? Or maybe I'm getting muddled and my RI said they can ONLY see yellow? Does anyone know?
 
To see colour you need colour-sensitive cones in your eyes. Humans have 3: blue, green and red. These allow us to see all the various hues of those colours. (Yellow is part of the red spectrum). Horses have 2: blue & green. So they can't distinguish red from orange or yellow. But they can still SEE it. So maybe your horse doesn't like the shape of daffodils, or the brightness of yellow?
 
Thanks Krissie, that's very interesting. I'm going for brightness as the two 'arrangements' we came across were quite different - one was a cluster of little flowers and the other was a spread out affair along the verge. Funny that he doesn't mind all the high-viz I deck us out in though! Maybe the 'high-viz' lying on the ground upset him! Or maybe there's something in the colour of daffodils that looks different to him - like those pictures they used to show us to test colour blindness - there was always one with a shape that colour-blind children could see but non-colour-blind children couldn't.

I understand why we use RGB to set the colour on computer programs now, thanks!
 
Bodshi,
coud it be smell and movement added in as well?

or has he ever had anything big/bad happen whilst he was around daffodils before?
horses have a type of memory that some of us as humans strongly have,and cows are known to have to,where objects are attached to something that happened whilst around them-can be good or bad and nothing to do with whatever happened.
 
All colour is reflections of light and energy so whether you can actually see yellow or not, you will still see something.

I saw a fantastic device for blind people that if they press it on fabric it tells them the colour.
 
PoweredbyHorses, that's an interesting thought. I'm guessing it was sight rather than smell because it seemed to be when he saw them that his head went up and he kind of went 'holy sh*t, what the Fs that?' !!

However, I've no idea whether he might associate them with something bad that's happened in the past, I wish I could read his mind sometimes - it's that sort of thing that makes me wonder whether to get a 'horse whisperer' in.

Typically enough, after posting that message this morning he proceeded to completely ignore all the millions of daffodils that have now opened, when we went for our afternoon hack.

newforest - that's amazing, wonder how it works?
 
http://www.alibaba.com/product-free/109236266/TalkingSoap_Multi_functional_talking_device_for.html

Don't know this is a link

"A color recognition device is provided. The color recognition device includes a color image sensor, an image processing system, and a projection device. The color image sensor senses a color image having an image area with a specific color, and generates a first electrical signal corresponding to the color image. The image processing system receives the first electrical signal, modifies the color image, and generates a second electrical signal. The projection device receives the second electrical signal, and projects a modified image corresponding to the second electrical signal."

In other words it just knows.
 
Last edited:
newrider.com
Top Bottom
Back