Shadowing Practice: Dog vision, explained - Learn English Speaking with YouTube
C1
How do they know what colors dogs can see?
192 sentences
If sentences are too short or too long, click Edit to adjust them.
1
How do they know what colors dogs can see?
2
There's this myth that won't go away,
3
that dogs only see in black and white,
4
but that's just not true.
5
There's a bunch of apps and filters now that claim to show dog color vision.
6
But where does our understanding of this canine rainbow come from?
7
And do these filters really capture how dogs see the world?
8
Before we get to dogs,
9
how do we know what colors humans can or can't see?
10
I'm sure you've seen these before, right?
11
Yeah.
12
Do you have normal color vision?
13
I have, I think, normal color vision.
14
I think that says 45.
15
So what just happened there?
16
Light from this image entered Cleo's eye,
17
where it hit cells in her retina called cones that in turn sent electrical signals to her brain,
18
which created her perception of color.
19
This rainbow is just how our brain translates different wavelengths of light from one small section of the electromagnetic spectrum.
20
Clio, like most people, has three types of cone cells,
21
each one sensitive to a different part of the spectrum,
22
relatively short wavelengths of light, medium wavelengths, and long.
23
Their sensitivity peaks at specific points,
24
but it drops off smoothly in both directions.
25
So, when what we call orange light comes in and hits an S-cone,
26
its wavelength lands outside this sensitivity curve.
27
But if it hits an M-cone, a signal is produced.
28
And with the L-cone, an even stronger signal.
29
These signals are combined and interpreted by the brain as orange.
30
When so-called green light comes in,
31
the cones send a different set of signals.
32
And so people with normal vision can make out the number 45 in this pattern.
33
But what What if you were missing this M-cone,
34
like about 0.5% of the population?
35
Both orange and green light would stimulate the L-cone about the same amount.
36
And without the M-cone, the signals would be too similar.
37
The brain wouldn't be able to distinguish between them,
38
and the number 45 would disappear into the background.
39
For those who can't read numbers,
40
like toddlers, there are versions of this test that just have the subject trace a loopy line.
41
But how do you design a vision test for a dog?
42
If I were trying to do this with Thor,
43
I would concoct a test that involves getting food at the end,
44
if and only if he can demonstrate that he can see two different colors.
45
That's pretty much what Jay Knights did back in the late 1980s.
46
I said, we have to solve this question once or for all.
47
I went home at lunchtime and got my dog.
48
A toy poodle appropriately named Retina.
49
Brought him into the laboratory seven days a week for a year.
50
Lab setup was a little chamber.
51
There were three discs illuminated from behind.
52
The dog was trained to boop whatever disc looked different with her nose.
53
If she chose right, she heard a click and got a little treat.
54
If she chose wrong, no treat and a buzzer sound.
55
Once Retina learned that Jay wanted her to identify the different circle,
56
it was time for the real experiments.
57
One of the first experiments that we did,
58
we had three different white lights,
59
and then we added a little bit of the particular color.
60
At first we'd add a little bit and the dog can't see it.
61
But add more, and the dog can pick it out.
62
And if it takes a very small amount of any particular wavelength,
63
that means that they must be very sensitive.
64
For each color, they plotted out this sensitivity.
65
And we just marched across the whole entire rainbow.
66
This sensitivity curve strongly suggests that dogs have just two cones,
67
centered here and here.
68
And at this low point in the middle, something interesting happened.
69
Retina couldn't tell the difference between this color and white light.
70
There's some wavelength in the middle part of the spectrum that's kind of where the two cones overlap.
71
The light equally stimulates the two cones.
72
When all three of our cones are equally stimulated,
73
humans see shades of gray.
74
And the same would be true for dogs with their two cones.
75
For them, this is the point of that equal stimulation.
76
Another set of experiments mimicked those colorblindness tests we talked about before.
77
And as you'd expect from someone with just two cones,
78
retina struggled to tell the difference between oranges and greens.
79
Jay confirmed his results with two other dogs and published them in 1989.
80
Now my dog is much more famous in the realm of science than I am.
81
Follow-up studies gathered similar data,
82
and if you put that together with what we know about human vision,
83
you can start to paint a picture of the rainbow that dogs see.
84
Blue on one end, fading into gray in the middle,
85
and then yellow on the other end.
86
It's probably not that different from what a human missing their M-cone would see.
87
It makes me wonder how many times I have interacted with Thor in a way
88
that kind of expected him to be able to see the full spectrum of color.
89
Can I just put a filter on an image and be like,
90
oh, this is what a dog is seeing,
91
or are there complications to that?
92
Oh, I think it's way more complicated than that.
93
But that's a good first pass.
94
Is it anywhere near the subjective experience?
95
I think not.
96
I mean, there's a lot more complications just in the retina to begin with.
97
In addition to cones, mammals have rod cells that help them pick up light and motion.
98
And dogs have way more of these kinds of cells than humans.
99
That makes them more sensitive to movement and helps them see in low light.
100
They also have a layer called the tapetum lucidum that reflects light back through the retina.
101
That's what makes dogs' eyes shine at night.
102
Then there's a difference in the arrangement of cells in the retina.
103
We have lots of cells across all of the back of the eyeball,
104
but an especially dense group of cells in the center,
105
which enables us to see the thing that's right in front of us.
106
But some breeds of dogs are different.
107
They have a density of cells that sort of extends...
108
Oh, I just made a hard...
109
They have a density of cells that I love.
110
And
111
that horizontal band of cells might make it easier for them
112
to take in visual information across a broader swath of the horizon.
113
The position of their eyes often gives them a wider field of vision,
114
but less overlap, which means weaker depth perception.
115
Dogs are also mostly nearsighted.
116
Distant things are fuzzier.
117
And additionally, dogs' visual experience of the world is going to be completely tied up in the olfactory experience of the world.
118
This is the aspect of dog vision that I don't think we humans can ever fully understand.
119
So, this is just an image of the olfactory peduncles in the human on the left and the dog on the right.
120
These are called peduncles?
121
These are olfactory peduncles, yeah.
122
That's a great word, wow.
123
The olfactory system in the human takes up approximately 0.03% of the brain.
124
Dogs do have a hugely larger olfactory system.
125
They are detecting things that we are completely unable to detect.
126
There's a bunch of studies that show dogs can smell cancer,
127
malaria, COVID-19, explosives, diseased avocado trees,
128
whale poop on the ocean,
129
even the emotional state of their owners.
130
You know, I do sometimes think
131
when I put perfume on what my dog is thinking because it must be quite overwhelming for them.
132
Here's another way to look at the brain.
133
These are tractograms made with a special MRI technique.
134
These lines trace the paths of white matter,
135
the fibers that speed signals between different regions of the brain.
136
You can virtually dissect these tractograms, highlighting different roots.
137
For example, here are the paths extending from human olfactory peduncles to other regions.
138
But here is the dog brain.
139
Whoa.
140
There's information freeways running from the nose to other parts of the brain.
141
And these weren't found before just because no one really looked?
142
Yeah, pretty much.
143
Can you guess what this is circling?
144
It's going here.
145
Yeah, what is there?
146
Do you know?
147
I have no idea what's here.
148
It's a little counterintuitive because in both humans and dogs,
149
the place that we process vision is actually the back of our head,
150
this occipital lobe back here.
151
Oh, so what you're saying is dogs are processing smell like we are processing sight, sort of?
152
Well, it's interesting because it's not unique to the dog that they might use a different sense to generate vision.
153
I mean, we know that bats are a classic example.
154
They can navigate through their auditory pathways.
155
It's very possible that dogs can identify structures in the room from scent as well as from vision.
156
Seeing and smelling are interwoven in an important way,
157
and that is something completely unlike what we have in our brain.
158
When I think about my sense of the world,
159
my mental map of where I am in space,
160
where other things are, like how those things relate to each other and move,
161
like all of that is visual.
162
We literally use the word visualize like that's what I'm thinking.
163
But for a dog like now I'm imagining Thor's sense of the world
164
and his place in it is like a spatial awareness that depends on smell.
165
That's fascinating.
166
Wow I don't even know I can't grok this fully.
167
Yeah I mean I think it's impossible to grok.
168
It's ungrokkable.
169
Have you come across this term Umwelt?
170
No. It's a term that comes from this German biologist whose name I can't remember right now,
171
but it's something I couldn't pronounce even if I could remember it.
172
Jakob Johann von Uxgut.
173
And Umwelt, it refers to the different realities experienced by different organisms,
174
the set of things that are meaningful to them,
175
some of which we can't even sense.
176
You come to see that we're just seeing like
177
but one of many worlds which are existing in parallel and other animals are seeing in another slice.
178
Star Rainbow might be more varied than that of a dog, but...
179
Their olfactory world is so explosively colorful that it wouldn't occur to them for a second that there's something that's being missed.
180
This is.. it really does help me understand my little best friend better.
181
I feel like I feel connected to his world and sort of an appreciation that his world is different and also beautiful.
182
I don't see Rowdy in his box today,
183
but you're also a cat guy.
184
Can cats do the booping test?
185
I find it hard to believe.
186
That might be my stereotypes about cats,
187
but have people investigated this?
188
And what do we know about cat color vision?
189
Well, hey, everybody, it's Adam from the future.
190
It's the next morning.
191
I've got Rowdy back with me.
192
And I've been up all night reading cat studies.
Download App
AI scoring for every sentence you speak
TRENDING
Popular
About This Lesson
In today's lesson, you will explore intriguing insights into how dogs perceive color and the science behind their vision. As you watch the video, you will practice your english speaking skills by listening to the explanation of canine vision. By the end of this session, you will not only understand how dogs’ eyes work but also enhance your vocabulary related to animal biology and vision science. This is a fantastic opportunity to learn English with YouTube, engaging with content that is both educational and entertaining.
Key Vocabulary & Phrases
- Myth - A widely held but false belief or idea.
- Cones - Photoreceptor cells in the retina that are responsible for color vision.
- Wavelength - The distance between successive peaks of waves, important in the study of light.
- Sensitivity - The capacity to detect color in varying light conditions.
- Electromagnetic spectrum - The range of all types of electromagnetic radiation, including visible light.
- Perception - The way in which something is understood or interpreted.
- Distinguish - To recognize or ascertain what makes something different.
- Stimulate - To cause or encourage a response or reaction.
Practice Tips
As you engage with the video content, utilizing the shadowing technique can greatly improve your english speaking practice. Here are some tips to effectively implement shadowing:
- Listen to a segment of the video, then pause and repeat what you’ve heard, mimicking the speaker's intonation and pace.
- Focus on specific phrases, especially those related to the key vocabulary, to strengthen your understanding and pronunciation.
- Start with slower segments of the video, gradually increasing speed as you become more comfortable with the content.
- Record your attempts and play them back to assess your fluency and clarity, making adjustments as needed.
- Don’t hesitate to re-watch challenging sections, as repetition is an essential part of mastering language skills.
Remember, embracing a unique topic like canine vision not only makes learning English enjoyable but also enriches your vocabulary. Use shadowspeak as you practice, and soon you’ll notice significant improvements in your speaking skills!
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.
☕ Buy us a coffee
ShadowingEnglish remains 100% free thanks to your support. Server and AI costs are high — your coffee keeps us going! 🙏