COLOR BLINDNESS OF CATS 

 J. C. DeVOSS and rose ganson 



From the Psychological Laboratory of the University of Colorado 



FOUR FIGURES 



INTRODUCTION 



The term "color-blindness" is used in the title of this paper, 

 not because color-vision should be denied of an animal as a result 

 of a single investigation, no matter how carefully it may have 

 been conducted, but because the results of our experiments 

 certainly make the term "color-blindness" a less presumptuous 

 one than "color-vision" when applied to these animals. 



The experiments were carried on in diffuse daylight and during 

 the same hours each day, so that the results apply to the light- 

 adapted eye of the cat. The fact that every discrimination 

 and confusion made by one cat were also made by another, 

 "the follower," would indicate that the conditions were not 

 variable enough to cause a difference between the responses 

 of the two animals. This agreement would indicate further 

 that our results represent general characters of feline vision 

 rather than individual peculiarities. 



The investigation was begun in February 1911 and continued 

 until June 1913. Thus it required twenty-eight months to test 

 the animals with the large number of colors and grays which we 

 employed. 



We are indebted to Professor Lawrence W. Cole, under whose 

 supervision the work was done, for invaluable advice and en- 

 couragement as well as for the suggestion of the problem. We 

 also wish to acknowledge our obligation to Miss Mary E. Lakenan, 

 who did some preliminary work toward devising a method 

 suited to the animals to be tested. 



Among the mammals, the vision of mice, rats, rabbits, squirrels, 

 dogs, cats, raccoons, and monkeys has been investigated. Only 

 one cat was included but Colvin and Burford 1 found it equal in 



1 Colvin, S. S. and Burford, C. C. The color-perception of three dogs, a cat, 

 and a squirrel. Psych. Rev. Monog. Supp., vol. 11, Nov., 1909, pp. 1-49. 



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