Dogs Clearly Have a Favorite Color, New Study Finds

By now, most pet parents know that the old idea that dogs see in black and white is a myth. It’s true that dogs have a much more limited color spectrum than most humans, but they can see a range of blue and yellow shades, similarly to humans with red-green color blindness. And just as they have strong opinions on their favorite toys and snacks, dogs have a fondness for one color more than the other. A new study found that street dogs in India show a strong preference for yellow.

Scientists at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research carried out tests on 134 adult street dogs in urban, semi-urban, and rural areas. An experimenter set out three bowls near a dog before vocalizing to get the pup’s attention; the bowls were yellow, blue, and gray. The bowls were placed in a random order each time.

In some of the tests, each bowl had a biscuit. In others, there was no food in the bowls. In each version of the test, yellow emerged as the most chosen bowl by far.

They then studied the preference between just blue and gray bowls. There was no significant preference between these colors.

In the final experiment, researchers offered the dogs a choice between a gray bowl with food and a yellow bowl without food. Amazingly, the dogs still approached the yellow bowl; the yellow bowl was chosen 41 times, while the gray bowl with food was only chosen 11 times. When they used chicken instead of a biscuit in the gray bowl, the results held; the empty yellow bowl was chosen 47 times, and the gray bowl with food was chosen 14 times.

“Our experiments demonstrate a clear preference for the color yellow over blue and gray in FRDs of India, at least in the context of foraging,” Anamitra Roy, the study’s lead author, wrote. “This preference is so strong that it supersedes their attraction towards food, whether biscuit or chicken.”

Experimenters aren’t sure exactly why dogs love yellow so much. One guess is that for dogs who scavenge, raw meat and blood appear yellow, and so do many foods available to them of human origin which use turmeric and dried chili. It may be that yellow bowls had a higher contrast to the other bowls. They also note that color preference can be innate or learned, so it’s possible that their results are localized. For example, a separate study found that street dogs in Morocco had no color preference. Regardless of the reason, yellow was the clear favorite for these pups. Loving a color more than a treat? That’s a whole lot of love.