Coyotes are adaptable canids found across diverse North American landscapes, from wildlands to urban areas. Their survival relies heavily on acute senses, including vision. Understanding their color perception offers insights into their behavior and interactions within their habitats.
Coyote Color Perception
Coyotes, like many mammals, possess dichromatic vision, meaning their eyes contain two types of cone cells. These photoreceptors are primarily sensitive to blue and yellow wavelengths, allowing coyotes to perceive a world composed mainly of these colors.
Due to this dichromatic structure, colors such as red and green are not seen as distinct hues by coyotes. Instead, these colors appear as shades of grey or yellowish-brown. While cones are responsible for color vision in brighter light, the coyote’s eyes also contain a superabundance of rod cells. These rod cells are highly sensitive to low light, enhancing their night vision and enabling them to see considerably better in dim conditions than humans.
Comparing Coyote and Human Vision
Human vision is trichromatic, meaning our eyes contain three types of cone cells. These cones are sensitive to red, green, and blue wavelengths, allowing humans to perceive a broad spectrum of colors. This enables us to distinguish a wide array of hues and subtle color variations that are invisible to dichromatic animals.
For example, a vibrant red apple resting on green grass would appear distinctly red and green to a human eye. To a coyote, that same scene would likely appear in shades of yellow and blue, with the red apple and green grass blending into similar tones of grey or yellowish-brown. Humans generally have a visual acuity of 20/20, while coyotes typically have 20/75 vision, meaning they must be at 20 feet to see what a human can see clearly at 75 feet. Coyotes compensate for this by having a wider peripheral vision, covering about 260 degrees compared to a human’s 180 degrees.
Implications for Interaction with Coyotes
The coyote’s color perception influences their ability to detect objects and activity in their environment. Their vision, adapted for detecting movement and functioning in low light, means that subtle shifts in light and shadow or quick movements are more readily noticed than static, camouflaged objects. Bright colors like orange, commonly worn by hunters for human safety, appear as duller shades of grey or brown to coyotes, making them less conspicuous than they would be to a human. However, blues and yellows are more visible to them.
Coyotes can also detect ultraviolet (UV) light, which is beyond the human visual spectrum. This means that clothing laundered with detergents containing fluorescent brightening agents, which glow under UV light, could make a person stand out to a coyote even if the clothing appears camouflaged to human eyes. While their color vision is limited, their overall visual system, combined with their acute senses of smell and hearing, makes them highly effective at navigating their surroundings and interacting with other animals and humans. Red lights, often used for night observation, are less intrusive to coyotes as they perceive red as a dark shade, making them useful for minimal disturbance.