Discussion WesternAnimation / Up

Just deleted this from Viewers Are Geniuses:

• Dogs are NOT colorblind. It's a very common misconception, often used in media because nearly everyone believes it. Dogs can see yellows, blues, and certain greens very well. Their visual acuity peaks at the blue-violet and yellow-green range. They have a very hard time distinguishing reddish colors and orange, and some shades of purple. Dogs are color deficient, but certainly not blind. It's easy to imagine that Dug can't play the game because while he can distinguish blue, he can't distinguish red. Though, if it's easier for the audience to assume he can't see any colors at all...well the general public needs to watch some more Discovery Channel...or Animal Planet.
  • He called a red one grey, though, and you said dogs can't see red. If anything, the misconception makes it more of a Genius Bonus—average viewers will go ah-he's-colorblind-I-get-it and those of us who are more informed will go ah-he-can't-see-red-I-get-it.

...because, ironically, this "correction" of a "popular misconception" is itself based on a popular misconception; failure to understand what blindness in general, and colour blindness in particular, actually are. Blindness isn't necessarily a total lack of vision; someone who can discern light and dark, but not shapes, would be registered blind even though they have a small amount of vision.

Similarly, colour blindness doesn't necessarily mean total monochrome vision; far, far more common is red-green blindness, which is an inability to distinguish between those two hues. Men (it's almost exclusively men) who suffer this defect have far better colour vision than that ascribed to dogs above, and yet are classified as colour blind.

The use of spoilers on this page seems a tad inconsistent; Kevin being female is spoilered in some places but mentioned openly in others. I think someone with more patience than I should go through the page and remove all spoiler tags from the "Kevin is a girl" references.