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msar-riders - Re: [MSAR] colors

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Subject: Mounted search and rescue

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  • From: "Jorene Downs" <Jorene@CEOates.com>
  • To: "'Mounted search and rescue'" <msar-riders@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [MSAR] colors
  • Date: Sat, 2 May 2009 17:10:58 -0700

Consider that the red light used during a SAR isn’t intended to [hopefully] hide from snipers, but as a color selected to reduce impact on the horse’s night vision while still allowing some rider visibility.

 

**** The research showed that horses, with their dichromatic vision, cannot distinguish red. "It's not that they don't 'see' red," says Dr Carroll. "They just can't discriminate in the red/green region of the spectrum. They are also slightly less sensitive to red light." **** (2008)

Source: http://www.horsetalk.co.nz/features/horsevision-142.shtml

 

According to the color wheel examples included in that article, red shades tend to look rather gray to a horse, which presumably wouldn’t cause much of a problem at night other than the potential for any light to cause casting a shadow where otherwise a shadow is not expected.

 

Green may be another option to use at night with horses. I’m accustomed to using red since I have used red floodlights for many years in foaling stalls monitoring pregnant mares at night by camera, and the red provides better lighting for clarity than using infrared cameras.

 

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Jorene Downs

SAR & CERT

Mounted SAR

www.ceoates.com/msar

 

 

 

 

From: IRVIN LICHTENSTEIN

If you decide to use a “night” light red is not the best color.  This is an urban myth from the user’s point of view.  Red is one of the hardest colors to see at night, thus if there are snipers out there you use red for self protection.   […]




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