Not generalising in the least: I'm a man of the people who interacts often with the common man - particularly the rustic and bucolic variety (from the Auvergne in Deepest Darkest France to the dusty hinterland of rural Victora and New South Wales).

Everywhere I've ever lived, I've had conversations about animals (most of which I've initiated, I admit - and most of them before I went veggie), with folks ranging from French eleveurs de boeuf to Melbourne barristers and stock analysts: their lack of awareness of the complexity of animal sense organs (and their ignorance of animal awareness research generally) is astounding.

Fair enough.

It may well be that you've never met anybody who thinks that all animals see in monochrome - maybe you're young, maybe you don't get out much, or maybe you don't have discussions about animals much.

Probably.

Lastly: what makes you think that dogs see in monochrome? As far as we can tell dogs see the visual spectrum in the same way as a red-green colour-blind human does - they have both rods and cones in their visual apparatus, but with different sensitivities than humans' (same for cats, but carts lack cones that filter for red).

Whoops, you're right. I was misremembering.

Cats certainly act as if they know something we don't.

... they do? I have four cats, and I've seen them do some pretty stupid things, but nothing that seemed to suggest they have any senses we haven't discovered yet . What kind of thing did you have in mind?