Can bearded dragons see color?

[Ghoul]

Hey y'all, I'm doing a project at school on bearded dragons and color vision. However, I can't find any sources for whether or not they can see colors, or which ones they can. Does anyone have any credible sources I could use on this topic?
Even just beardies and vision in general. I'm having a rough time.

 

[SHBailey]

It's my understanding that they have full color vision and can also see into the ultraviolet. There's lots of stuff on the internet (credible and otherwise), and I suppose you've already tried googling it. Wikipedia is not considered a reliable source for school projects, but sometimes it can be a good jumping off place if you chase down the original sources from the references they list.

Sorry that's probably not much help. Maybe others will have more ideas and post some links, and maybe you can let the rest of us know what you find.

 

[SHBailey]

Oops! Somehow I posted that twice. Tried to delete the second one.

 

[label]

Check out Frohnwieser, A., Pike, T. W., Murray, J. C. and Wilkinson, A. (), Perception of artificial conspecifics by bearded dragons (Pogona vitticeps). Integrative Zoology. Accepted Author Manuscript. doi:10.1111/1749-4877.12303.

The paper has a plot of the sensitivity of each of the cones (the colour-sensitive cells in the retina) in bearded dragons. A library should be able to access the paper using the doi.

Good luck!

 

[Catzo]

Wikipedia is not considered a reliable source for school projects

Tell that to my bachelors degree. Wikipedia is great right up until grad school.
Just cite wikipedia's citations and not wikipedia itself

 

[CooperDragon]

I'm fairly sure they can see color quite well. In addition to looking through the research papers mentioned I've found that my dragon can see bright hornworms easily from the next room. He is also able to see the red dot from the heat gun and follow it with his head like a cat would. He can also see images on a screen. While this doesn't necessarily prove ability to see color it at least shows that they have pretty sharp eyesight and can see two dimensional/projected objects.

 

[SHBailey]

Wikipedia is not considered a reliable source for school projects

Tell that to my bachelors degree. Wikipedia is great right up until grad school.
Just cite wikipedia's citations and not wikipedia itself

I mentioned that because I once heard a horror story about a college professor who warned his students not to use Wikipedia to write their papers. Apparently, he had enough system privileges on Wikipedia to post some false information, so that if anyone used it without checking the sources and included the false information in their papers, he'd know they cheated.

Pretty dirty trick for an instructor to play, if you ask me, but students beware... :study:

Meanwhile, I find varying opinions about beardie vision on the internet, but not a lot from the "primary literature," and most of what is there only gives you the abstract unless you subscribe to the journal, so you might still need a trip to a library.

 

[label]

Wikipedia can be good for finding references but using it as a reference can be risky. The article I mentioned showed what colours beardies are sensitive to and they're more skewed towards the blue than we are. Since they can change colour it makes sense that they're sensitive to it. And I know my girl can spot me carrying a dandelion from across the room--I can tell but the look of anticipation on her face.

 

[SHBailey]

Yes, I think both color and movement matter. When our beardie went through his 3 year "I like bugs but don't try to get me to eat veggies" phase (which seems to have finally come to an end just this month), he got the idea that brown and black things tasted good but green things tasted yucky, so hornworms were a puzzle. I could just about see him thinking, "It's green so it must taste nasty, but it's moving so maybe it will be good." He'd scarf them up pretty quick once he figured that out. :mrgreen:

I remember reading an article suggesting that beardie color changes on their back are more about temperature (darker colors to absorb more heat when they want to warm up), but the ones on their underside are more about expressing their emotions and communicating with other beardies who can see them from the ground (black bearding, etc). They seem to have some pretty specific control over which parts turn which colors -- I've seen our beardie with one little part of his beard black and the rest of it "normal" colored (whatever that is), but if he's trying to tell me something special with that, I haven't been able to crack the code. :?