Eye shine and other related stuff - Page 1

I would be very much interested to know other peoples' observations on the color of their dogs' eyeshine. I am particularly interested to get feedback on multiple dogs, together, where differences can be seen in the color. The identity of the dog is not important, except that as it moves around with the others, you should be able to make consistent observations regarding eye color (reflective color) in individuals.

I have just noticed, under the light of a somewhat weak flashlight, that two of my dogs' eyes shine orange, and one shines green. From what I could see, this difference was very consistent as the dogs moved about in the kennel. I could tell which dog was which. Two had orange eye shine and one had green or pale green / yellow.

I have been thinking for some time now that humans may actually have a latent or forgotten ability to see a certain bandwidth of the infra red spectrum, because of the fact that our eyes reflect red in the light of a camera flash. I have heard that this is because of blood vessels at the back of the eye, but I am questioning this very strongly. Reports over the millenia of the sighting of "auras" surrounding some people may be explained by this phenomenon. It could be that we all have the latent ability to see this, but are more "tuned in" to normal visible light, as part of the ultra violet spectrum of sunlight.

The greenish light reflected by the one dog's eyes is more similar in color to the color of things as seen with starlight vision goggles (military type). These work by collecting the smallest traces of reflected ambient light, as in starlight, and magnifying / concentrating them to create an accurate image at the back of the eye. This would certainly be ample for most animals which have to find their way around at night.. however.. hunters may actually make some better use of the ability to see a part of the infrared spectrum, which would be given off by warm bodies, as in prey species.

If there was a variation within a group of animals as to precisely what part or parts of the spectrum they might see, this might actually be an advantage to the group, when night hunting and navigating open ground in packs or groups.

Any input or thoughts would be appreciated... Thanks!

Georgia's is green.  Weird bit of trivia - my son is legally blind because his optic nerve did not form correctly and the optic disc at the back of his eye is very small.  In pictures, his eyes reflect white even if everyone else has redeye.

From wikipedia:
Eyeshine is a visible effect of the tapetum lucidum. When a light is shone into the eye of an animal having a tapetum lucidum, the pupil appears to glow. Eyeshine can be seen in many animals, in nature and in flash photographs. In low light, a hand-held flashlight is sufficient to produce eyeshine that is highly visible to humans (despite our inferior night vision); this technique, spotlighting, is used by naturalists and hunters to search for animals at night. Eyeshine occurs in a wide variety of colors including white, blue, green, yellow, pink and red. However, because eyeshine is a form of iridescence, the color varies slightly with the angle at which it is seen and the color of the source light.

White eyeshine occurs in many fish, especially walleye; blue eyeshine occurs in many mammals such as horses; yellow eyeshine occurs in mammals such as cats, dogs, and raccoons; and red eyeshine occurs in rodents, opossums and birds.[citation needed]

The human eye has no tapetum lucidum, hence no eyeshine. However, in humans and animals two effects can occur that may resemble eyeshine: leukocoria (white shine, indicative of abnormalities including cataracts, cancers, and other problems) and red-eye effect.

By the way, the red "color" I am talking about would work the same as FLIR lights on police / military helicopters. We have lots of these things around at night. I am near to two airports and some of them take off and land at one nearby. I've noticed over the years that the FLIR (forward looking infra red) light is not exactly red, but a strange looking variant of it.. This light is able to reflect off of warm objects on the ground, making them visible through special optics.

I do actually believe now that at some time, long ago, when our ancestors were very primitive creatures, that we had the ability to see parts of the infra red spectrum, and that this was probably used as an assist in hunting. In fact, some of the skulls of Neandertal man and other primitive hominids have exceptionally large orbital sockets, indicating that the eye balls themselves were quite large and thereby able to process much smaller amounts of available ambient light. Sorry if you don't believe in the possibility of the survival of remnant populations of relic hominids (i.e. "bigfoot"), but I do consider this possibility, and there are sites on the internet which have logged thousands of very credible reports of such. One of the consistent items in many reports is of a red eye-shine. (!!!!!) Very telling, indeed.

Sorry to the skeptics and creationists out there, but it would be a pity if we all thought alike, anyway.. There would be no progress or advancement possible, if we did..
So, why not be curious, anyway.. It's more fun than not..

Thank you, AKGeorgias Mom! That was very good! I have heard of some of this, but something tells me there is more to it. Hoping there is more research available, somewhere...

Wow, my boyfriends husky mix has BIG red eyeshines, camera or not.... What does that mean? She has almost WHITE eyes. Here is a picture of her. I cannot get a picture of her without red eye. At night it is the same color from across the yard.

ROFLMAO!!!! Your dog is either possessed, or it's been into the neighbor's pot stash!! LOL

Has anyone ever seen a dog with progressive retinal atrophy? It's really strange! The pupils are really dilated, even in full daylight, and they have a greenish glow as well (in daylight!). If you look into them, they may have a sort of image reflected on the cornea, from the INSIDE.. like a square or diamond shape.. It looks like a cloudy hologram. It's being projected from the back of the retina!  This is a form of progressive blindness, seen in young adult dogs. It may be really hard to tell, behaviorally, because the dog learns to compensate..

The way I picked it up on one dog is that he came back to me because he could not progress in training. He was ready to start doing run outs and he was strong on the man, but he'd sort of peter out and give up. Nobody could figure out what was wrong with him. He was a nice dog, so I didn't mind taking him back to replace.. But the visual cues.. the holographic reflection on the cornea and the ever-dilated pupils.. were troublesome. I just didn't know what they meant..

One day, I had him in a large run with two bitches, and I threw down some dry food for them to eat. As they picked it up off the ground, I noticed that he was getting only about half as much as they were. Suddenly I realized that he couldn't see! He was finding the food with his nose, but they were able to use their eyes, so they went faster in picking it up. That was the break through. Unfortunately, there was no cure and no home for this dog, so he had to be put down.. Which was a shame. But he had an old W. German working line on the dam's side which came from a local breeder.. from whom we had heard a good many reports of blindness in that line. So, there was the connection. The problem came from pretty far back in the pedigree, too..

There is some association with coat colour.  White markings are areas lacking pigment and this sometimes extends to the area of the eye producing blue eye.  Red eyeshine occurs when retinal pigment is lacking and this is always the case in blue eyed dogs, but also occurs in some normal brown eyed dogs.  Obviously some genetic contribution, all Bernese Mountain Dogs (brown eyed) that I have observed have had red eyeshine.   It also seems to be more common in brown pigmented dogs IME.

Blue merle coat pattern sometimes causes the tapetum lucidum to be missing but I can't remember if this is just in blue eyed merles or includes brown as well.  There is a paper on this somewhere.

Color spectrum and light wavelength have always fascinated me, even more so when I started diving.  Everybody thinks that the deeper they dive, the more spectacular things there are to see.  Not at all and for a couple of reasons.  First, the deeper you go, the bluer everything appears, because blue, short wavelength light, is not absorbed by water as are the longer wavelength colors (yellows, reds, etc.).  The best diving is on a shallow reef, not deeper than 35', as you can still see the colors.  If you go to 50', you need a light, no matter how clear the water and how bright the sun.  The most awesome diving I've ever done though, was on a wall that started at about 120' and dropped to 5000' or more.  It was the most bizarre thing I've ever experienced, like walking off of a skyscraper and hanging in mid-air.  But, it was the deepest clear blue I've ever seen and I could have stayed there all day!  Scary but exhilarating!  Night dives can be pretty interesting too.  During a night shore dive, I found the larger fish using our lights to hunt!  Spot a pretty fish, don't keep your light on it too long or it's a midnight snack!  Schoolmasters (large snappers), in particular, have honed this skill and zoom in so fast, all you see is their tail, stirred sand and an empty spot where the pretty fish was.  I know some fish, such as sharks, detect and "see" heat, but evidently, some fish use eyesight and take advantage of unnatural light. 
BTW, Drake's eyes reflect green.

My two male Huskies have blue eyes and theirs reflect red in camera flashes or when light is shown on them at night.   Anubis my German Shepherd is green.......the other two I don't remember ever seeing.  I'm sure my other two Huskies eyes are different due to one of them having brown eyes, the pup, and the other female having both of her eyes being brown/blue.