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Dogs seem to have a strong preference for yellow things

When offered a choice of bowls, free-ranging dogs in India tend to approach a yellow one much more than blue or grey

By Christa Lesté-Lasserre

24 February 2025

Researchers gave stray dogs a choice of three bowls of different colours

Anamitra Roy et al. 2025

Street dogs in India appear to love yellow. In an experiment, the free-ranging canines approached an empty yellow bowl around three times more than a nearby blue or grey bowl, even when those other bowls held food.

The findings suggest that dogs could have an innate attraction to yellow colouring – or possibly that they recognise yellow as the colour of people’s thrown-out food, says at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research in Kolkata.

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