The Phenomenon of Eye Color | Horizon Eye Care (2024)

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The Phenomenon of Eye Color | Horizon Eye Care? ›

Eye color is a mysterious phenomenon that scientists still haven't completely figured out yet, but we do know that eye color can reveal a lot about a person's genetic code, and where their ancestors may have come from.

Two complementary theories of color vision are the trichromatic theory and the opponent process theory. The trichromatic theory, or Young–Helmholtz theory, proposed in the 19th century by Thomas Young and Hermann von Helmholtz, posits three types of cones preferentially sensitive to blue, green, and red, respectively.

Optical illusions and eye color

“If you're wearing a certain tone color in your shirt, it may bring out more of the blue or green in your eyes and make the color seem different,” explains Dr. Bajic. “But your eyes aren't actually changing, of course. It's just an optical illusion.”

This means that blue eyes do not actually have a set color. The blue comes from the amount of light available when we look at them. Brown eyes contain a high concentration of melanin in the stroma. The melanin absorbs most of the light entering the eye regardless of the collagen deposits, giving the eye a dark color.

While the global data on eye colors is limited, red and violet eyes are likely the rarest eye colors since they only affect a small group of people with albinism. But if you exclude eye colors brought on by albinism, then green and gray are likely the rarest.

We found that green is the most popular lens colour, with brown coming in a close second, despite it being one of the most common eye colours. Although blue and hazel are seen as the most attractive eye colours for men and women they are surprisingly the least popular.

A person's eye color depends on how much of a pigment called melanin is stored in the front layers of the iris, the structure surrounding the pupil. Specialized cells called melanocytes produce the melanin, which is stored in intracellular compartment called melanosomes.

Eye color is directly related to the amount of melanin in the front layers of the iris. People with brown eyes have a large amount of melanin in the iris, while people with blue eyes have much less of this pigment.

And further, the mutation can be linked to a single, common ancestor. Scientists speculate that the evolution of eye color paralleled the physical movement of our ancestors from warmer to colder climates. That's because it's believed that melanin in the eyes also acts a protective barrier from the sun.

We see our world in a huge variety of colour. However, there are other “colours” that our eyes can't see, beyond red and violet, they are: infrared and ultraviolet.

Do purple eyes exist? ›

Red and violet

Although the deep blue eyes of some people such as Elizabeth Taylor can appear purple or violet at certain times, "true" violet-colored eyes occur only due to albinism. Eyes that appear red or violet under certain conditions due to albinism are less than 1 percent of the world's population.

According to an article by evolutionary biology professor Mark Elgar, PhD, of the University of Melbourne, blue-eyed redheads are the absolute rarest, with 0.17% of the population having that combination of hair and eye color. So if that describes you, you're most likely one in a million—or more!

Of the less common eye colors, pink and red eyes are considered to be the most unique in the world, giving new meaning to the word “rare.” Only one in every 20,000 people have a form of albinism, according to the National Institutes of Health, and even fewer have red-tinted eyes.

Eye color is directly related to the amount of melanin in the front layers of the iris. People with brown eyes have a large amount of melanin in the iris, while people with blue eyes have much less of this pigment. A particular region on chromosome 15 plays a major role in eye color.

The more melanin present, the darker the eye color. However, the amount of melanin varies in each person, which is why no two people have the same exact eye color.

The eye color of both parents can impact the likelihood of specific eye colors in their offspring. For example, if both parents have brown eyes, it is more likely that their child will also have brown eyes. Ethnicity can also influence eye color inheritance.