Black Cat Appreciation Day 2024 is on Saturday, August 17, 2024: What is your favorite thing about black cats since today is Black Cat Appreciation Day?

Saturday, August 17, 2024 is Black Cat Appreciation Day 2024. Celestial Kitties: Black Cat Appreciation Day Speaking of black cats.

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Beautiful, shiney, regal.

Are house cats color blind? if so what colors can they see if any.?

Cats are nocturnal predators and hence their visual system is optimised for night time operation, when light levels are very low. Hence, although they can appreciate colours, cats do not have a well-developed colour visual system like that possessed by daytime-functioning animals, including humans.

To admit the maximum possible amount of light, cats' eyes employ a vertical-eliptical pupil which can open very wide at night (admitting 3 times as much light as the round equivalent). This is why it closes to resemble a 'slit' during the day.

Like humans, light is detected in the retina by 2 types of photoreceptors, rods and cones. Cones are larger than rods and capable of discriminating between different coloured lights because they contain different photopigments (rhodopsins) which only respond to light of specific wavelengths. Put very simply, there are populations of cones which are activated by red light, some which are activated by green light and others which are activated by blue light.

Rods are not colour sensitive. They contain the pigment 'scotopsin', which is more light sensitive than the rhodopsin found in the cones, meaning that less light is needed to activate a rod than a cone, and hence rods are more light sensitive.

At night time there is too little available light for cones to work and so, like a person under the same circumstances, most of a cat's low-light vision is achieved using rods alone, meaning that it sees only in shades of black and white.

Because rods are so light sensitive they are less useful during the day. A special layer at the back of the eye covers them up, and the cones are used instead. Cats have a lesser capacity to appreciate colours than humans do but can discriminate colours which differ greatly in spectral content.

in basic at night they are colour blind but in the day they do have some appreciation of different colours- just not as great as us

Halloo! Black hair and pink tips, your opinion?

Sounds awesome :) I think black with any fluro/colourful tips looks awesome. Hope it goes well :)