title: Brightness discrimination in the dog.
abstract: Almost nothing is known about brightness discrimination in animals and how this ability relates to their lifestyles. As arrhythmic visual generalists, three dogs, a German shepherd and two Belgian shepherds, were tested on their ability to discriminate brightness using a series of 30 shades of grey varying from white to black. The dogs were trained to discriminate between different shades of grey in a simultaneous two-choice situation. Weber's law can be correlated to their ability to discriminate brightness differences with a calculated Weber fraction of 0.22 for the German shepherd and 0.27 for the Belgian shepherds. Thus brightness discrimination in dogs is about 2 times worse than in humans, a diurnal species.
authors.affiliation: Institute for Physiology, Veterinary University Vienna, Vienna, Austria.
authors.forename: Gabriele
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Pretterer
authors.forename: Hermann
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Bubna-Littitz
authors.forename: Gerhard
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Windischbauer
authors.forename: Cornelia
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Gabler
authors.forename: Ulrike
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Griebel
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D004193:Discrimination Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D004285:Dogs / Q000502:physiology*; D008027:Light; D008297:Male; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*