There’s not a wealth of information out there on horse vision, but there are tons of myths. Like – horses can’t see well in the dark, they can only see in black and white, and their depth perception is very poor. Are these true? We know that horses can be in a field in the middle of the night and graze their way around without bumping into things, and that horses spook at orange traffic cones or blue barrels more frequently than natural-colored objects, and that horses can judge when to take off in front of a big jump. So these theories don’t seem to hold.
Dr. Evelyn Hanggi, president of the Equine Research Foundation in Aptos, California, told EquiSearch in this article that horses see the world similarly to how we do, but with some differences.
Horses can switch between monocular vision and binocular vision, meaning they can focus on something with both eyes, or see different things through their individual eyes.
Because horses’ eyes are on the sides of their heads, like many open-space prey animals, they have small blind spots in front of their heads and directly behind them. To compensate, they will turn their head to look at what is in front of and behind them.
Horses don’t see color the same way we do because they have different cone cells, but they can see some color.
Finally, horses can see just fine at night – even better than we do.
