An individual's eyes can reveal a lot about them, including their mood, feelings, and even emotions. By simply looking at them, eyes can convey a warm, bright, and inviting vibe as well as a cold and repellent one – they are the window to a person’s soul.
The Iris: What is it?
The iris is the part of the eye that produces color, and is the first thing most people draw to. It is a thin, circular piece of tissue, responsible for controlling the diameter and size of the pupil. It works much like a camera’s aperture, regulating light levels and helping us focus. The color of the iris varies from person to person and is one of the traits that are responsible for giving us our individual appearance. In ancient times, a prediction of an individual’s destiny was based on the unique characteristics of their iris.
Fingerprint VS. Iris
As early as the 1950s, scientists and health professionals suggested that the characteristics of the iris could be used for identification purposes. However, it wasn’t until much later that a system to recognize and catalog these identification points was developed. It is undeniable that our fingerprints are one-of-a-kind, but the uniqueness of the iris is far greater in comparison. The iris contains approximately 250 different characteristics that determine a person's identity, which is five times more than a fingerprint!
The iris identification error rate is about one in a million – even less when you correlate it with other biometric scanning like fingerprinting or facial recognition. Because of the tiny elevations and depressions in the iris, false negatives are about 10 times less common in iris scanning than in facial recognition.
Even identical twins, with the same DNA, do not have the same iris characteristics or the same fingerprints!
Eye Colors
Eye color is determined by the amount of melanin, or pigment, in the iris tissue. More melanin means darker eyes and less melanin means lighter eyes. A green iris, for example, has blue and some yellow while a brown iris contains mostly brown. Brown eyes have the most melanin, green eyes less, and blue eyes have none. Listed below are some interesting facts about eye color:
- Brown eyes are the most common eye color in the world with over 55% of the world's population having brown eyes.
- Hazel eyes have a higher concentration of melanin around the eye's border, which can result in a multi-colored appearance that varies between copper and green. About 5% to 8% of the world's population has hazel-colored eyes.
- Green eye color is the rarest color found around the world, estimated at only 2%.
- Approximately 8% of the world's population has blue eyes, and they share a common ancestor with every other blue-eyed person in the world.
- Silver eye colors along with grey and black are also quite rare, although many consider silver eyes to be a variation of blue eye color.
Ask us to photograph your iris at your next eye exam! Under magnification and bright light, your iris color may surprise you. Call our Complete Eye Care team and schedule with us today!
FAQs
Our eyes can reveal a lot about us, even when we're not consciously aware of it. Emotions are vividly expressed through our eyes: when we're happy, our eyes light up, and our pupils dilate. Alternatively, when we're sad or upset, our eyes may appear teary, and the pupils may constrict.
What do eyes show about a person? ›
An individual's eyes can reveal a lot about them, including their mood, feelings, and even emotions. By simply looking at them, eyes can convey a warm, bright, and inviting vibe as well as a cold and repellent one – they are the window to a person's soul.
What are your eyes trying to tell you? ›
Eyes aren't just the window to your soul — they also offer a glimpse into your health. Changes in your eyes can signal vision problems, diabetes, stress, even retinal detachment. What's more, most of these you can actually see for yourself — assuming you know what to look for.
What illnesses can be seen in the eyes? ›
What are the most common eye diseases?
- Cataracts.
- Refractive errors like astigmatism, farsightedness (hyperopia), nearsightedness (myopia), and age-related loss of up-close focusing (presbyopia).
- Glaucoma.
- Age-related macular degeneration.
- Diabetes-related retinopathy.
A quick photo helps detect the presence of disease, improves tracking minor changes, and provides an opportunity for you to view the pathology or changes to your eyes. Many eye problems can develop without warning and progress with no symptoms.
Can you tell a person's character by their eyes? ›
Our eyes can also reveal our level of confidence, assertiveness—and even our level of honesty. Studies have shown that people who maintain direct eye contact are often perceived as more confident and trustworthy, while avoiding eye contact may be interpreted as a sign of shyness, anxiety or deceit.
Do eyes reveal feelings? ›
Your eyes communicate much more than you may realize, in fact they play a huge role in your non-verbal communication. Consciously or not, the way you move your eyes, look at someone, blink or make eye contact can say a lot about what you are thinking and feeling.
Do your eyes tell the truth? ›
The scientific literature suggests that in fact the eyes can give away a lie but it is pupil size, not gaze direction, that is most revealing. Research has shown that people tend to have larger pupils when deceiving compared to telling the truth in a range of scenarios.
What health warning your eyes are telling you? ›
A yellow or blue ring around the cornea may be a sign of high cholesterol, especially in a person younger than age 40. Deposits in the blood vessels of the retina can also indicate elevated cholesterol. This may be the precursor to a life-threatening stroke.
What does someone's eyes do when they like you? ›
For starters, oxytocin and dopamine — the “love hormones” — have an effect on pupil size. Your brain gets a boost of these chemicals when you're sexually or romantically attracted to someone. This surge in hormones appears to make your pupils dilate. Dilation may also be related to the biological need to reproduce.
Regularly receiving a comprehensive eye exam is one of the most effective ways to detect—and start treating—a range of health problems. The eyes provide a window to the nerves, blood vessels, and connective tissue in a patient's body. Conditions observed in the eyes often signal larger health issues.
What are doctors looking for when they look in your eyes? ›
The observation of that nerve is a crucial part of a comprehensive eye examination. By examining your eyes in this way, your eye doctor can often detect conditions such as diabetes, high blood pressure, arterial plaque, multiple sclerosis, brain tumors, stroke, leukemia and many other conditions.
What health problems can an eye test detect? ›
8 Health Problems That Can Be Detected Through an Eye Exam
- High blood pressure. ...
- Heart disease. ...
- Diabetes. ...
- Rheumatoid arthritis. ...
- Thyroid disorder. ...
- Parkinson's disease. ...
- Cancer. ...
- Multiple sclerosis.
In humans, clear, white sclera may join such traits as smooth skin and long, lustrous hair as signs of health, beauty, and reproductive fitness. The evolution of a white sclera may have contributed to the emergence of humans as a social species.
Do my eyes tell a story? ›
Eyes definitely tell a story, you just have to look and examine them. Sometimes we cannot put an exact finger on it, but there are a few people who have darkened eyes like a deep abyss. We all carry our experiences throughout life and many times, it shows in our eyes.
What do eye pictures show? ›
Retinal imaging is a diagnostic test that creates high-quality digital images of the inner, back surface of your eye. It allows the diagnosis of many eye conditions like diabetes-related retinopathy, glaucoma and macular degeneration. Your provider will tell you how often you need retinal imaging.
What does your eyes represent? ›
Eyes are probably the most important symbolic sensory organ. They can represent clairvoyance, omniscience, and/or a gateway into the soul. Other qualities that eyes are commonly associated with are: intelligence, light, vigilance, moral conscience, and truth. Looking someone in the eye is a western custom of honesty.
How do eyes define personality? ›
The slant of the eye is the final indicator of personality. Those with upturned eyes are ambitious, motivated, and are considered by most around them to be extroverted. Because of this drive to always do better, it's a thin line between being viewed as dedicated and selfish.
What does eye contact show about a person? ›
Eye contact is expected in Western culture, it is a basic essential to a social interaction which shows a person's interest and engagement with your conversation. In Western cultures eyes are considered to show the central point of a person's focus.
What emotion are the eyes showing? ›
The eyes express all the emotions and states of mind and body. Eyes soften in love, harden with anger, widen in fear, narrow in suspicion, roll in exasperation, glaze with boredom, and weep in sadness.
