What colour are dolphins’ eyes?
Dolphins have brown eyes. In fact every whale, dolphin and porpoise has a brown iris, ranging from a rich reddish brown to greyish brown and very dark, almost black tones, according to the wildlife artist Frédérique Lucas, whose info sheet is shown above [1]. Their eyes are more colourful than that suggests, though. The brown iris is usually circled by a pale ring, normally a shade of blue, and the white of the eye (the sclera) is often coloured too [1].
That is why a dolphin’s eye can look almost black from a distance and surprisingly bright close up. Much of the eye is hidden by the eyelids when the animal is relaxed, often leaving only the iris and part of the ring showing, and shadows make the eye look darker than it is [1].
The parts of a dolphin’s eye
- Iris: always brown, but the shade varies a lot between individuals and populations [1].
- The pale ring: a ring around the iris, usually blue, from deep blue-grey to nearly white. It can be thin and crisp or wide and diffuse, and some individuals lack it. Lucas notes she has not found an official name for it and suggests it may be a deposit in the cornea; that is her hypothesis rather than an established finding [1].
- Sclera: often coloured or two-toned, which is very different from the white sclera of human eyes [1].
- Pupil: round to slightly oval in dim light. In bright light part of the iris, the operculum, drops over the pupil until it becomes a horseshoe shape with two small pinhole openings [1].
Most dolphins also have slightly flattened corneas, enlarged pupils that shrink when they surface, and a reflective layer behind the retina called the tapetum lucidum, which lets more light through the eye in murky or deep water [2].
Eye colour in different dolphins
True dolphins mostly have “clean” eyes, with a neat pale ring and a largely plain sclera [1]. There are local differences. In Lucas’s observations, Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins from Australia have almost human-looking eyes, with a very dark iris and a nearly white ring and sclera. Hawaiian Gray’s spinner dolphins have a sharp dark ring around the iris and a two-tone sclera that gives a triple-ringed look, which Red Sea spinners seem to lack. In common bottlenose dolphins, animals from warm equatorial waters may have darker irises than those from temperate seas [1].
What colour are orca eyes?
Orcas (killer whales) have brown irises like all cetaceans. Their eyes stand out because of what surrounds them: orcas belong to the group known as blackfish, along with false killer whales, pilot whales and Risso’s dolphins, which tend to have a darker, more hard-edged area around the iris and a sclera that is often pink to red [1]. The white eye patch above and behind an orca’s eye is a skin marking, not part of the eye.
Lucas once thought red scleras were typical of false killer whales, but found many with pale pink ones. She suggests the colour depends more on how active the animal is, because cetacean eyes have a rich blood supply [1].
What colour are whale eyes?
Baleen whales, such as humpbacks, minke whales, grey whales and right whales, also have brown irises, but they are more oval than round. Around the pale ring there is often an extra ring of pinkish, squiggly tissue that can look watery [1]. Every baleen whale Lucas has studied had a two-tone sclera, dark brown around the iris. The rest of the sclera is very white in rorquals, especially humpback whales, and more pinkish or red-tinged in right and bowhead whales [1].
Eyes vary within a species
Lucas stresses that her paintings are examples, not rules. Her comparison sheets of several false killer whales, bottlenose dolphins and spinner dolphins show clear differences in iris shade, ring width and sclera colour between individuals of the same species and between populations [1]. If you want to identify a species, eye colour is not a reliable guide; body shape, fins and markings are far better.
Can dolphins see colour?
Probably very little. Most land mammals have two types of colour-sensing cone cells in the retina, one for longer (green) and one for shorter (blue) wavelengths. A 2001 study found no short-wave cones at all in any of the seven toothed whale species it examined, leaving them with a single cone type, which the authors describe as essentially colour-blind [3]. A 2003 genetic study of 16 species from 12 of the 14 families of baleen and toothed whales found that the gene for short-wave cones was broken in every one, and concluded that all modern cetaceans probably lack them [4].
Dolphins still see well in both dim and bright light, because their eyes have far more rod cells than cone cells [2]. When they surface, their lens and cornea correct for the change from water to air [2], and they rely heavily on echolocation rather than sight.
Questions about dolphin eye colour
Do dolphins have blue eyes?
No. Their irises are brown, but many have a blue or blue-grey ring around the iris, which can make the eye look blue in photos [1].
What colour are killer whale eyes?
Brown, often with a pink to red sclera around the iris [1].
Why do dolphins’ eyes look black?
The iris is often very dark brown, much of the eye is hidden by the eyelids, and shadows make it look darker still [1].
Are dolphins colour-blind?
Largely, yes. Toothed whales lack the short-wave (blue) cones most mammals have, so they are thought to see little or no colour [3][4].
Sources
- Frédérique Lucas, What Colour Are Cetacean Eyes? (info sheet, 2023), the original infographic. frederiquelucas.com and her Tumblr.
- Wikipedia, Dolphin (vision).
- Peichl L., Behrmann G., Kröger R.H., For whales and seals the ocean is not blue: a visual pigment loss in marine mammals, European Journal of Neuroscience, 2001.
- Levenson D.H., Dizon A., Genetic evidence for the ancestral loss of short-wavelength-sensitive cone pigments in mysticete and odontocete cetaceans, Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 2003.
Last reviewed 2 November 2026
