Bones and Balls

Overview

Objectives/Goals My objective is to find out if dogs have a color preference by sight.(They are not color blind) Methods/Materials To test my theory, I chose 10 dogs, 4 colored tennis balls, and 4 colored food bowls, with dog bone treats inside each one. I chose to use the colors red, green, orange, and purple for the purpose of my tests. I did a "ball test" and a "bowl test" 6 times each with all of the dogs. For the bowl test, I set the four bowls in a horitzontal row ten feet from the dog and it's owner. Then released the dog. For the ball test, I rolled all four balls then the owner released the dog. Recorded the results. Do this test 4 times. Take the top 2 colors and repeat twice more. Results The results for the bowl test were...red was chosen 4 out of 60, green was chosen 8 out of 60, orange was chosen 3 out of 60, and purple was chosen 45 out of 60!! The results for the ball test were...red was chosen 4 out of 60, green was chosen 10 out of 60, orange was chosen 3 out of 60, and purple was chosen 43 out of 60!! As you can see, the dogs preferred the color purple over all of the other colors. Conclusions/Discussion As you can see by the results, the dogs preferred the color purple over all of the other colors. I did some research and found that the dogs chose the color purple not because it was their favorite, but because they could see it the best and the clearest out of the four choices they were given due to smaller amount of photoreceptors(cones)in their eyes. This lets them see colors as we see pastels.

Awards (1)

• Category Award

Competition history

• CSEF 2003 Mammalian Biology · Entry S1005

Resources

• CSEF project summary ↗

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