![]() ![]() This tendency is most common among caucasian babies. Many babies are born with blue or gray eyes but then develop a different eye color as they get older. Blue-eyed parents won’t always produce only blue-eyed children. That means it’s not so easy to predict a child’s eye color based on their parents’. There are two genes that are strongly associated with eye color, but as many as 16 play some role in it. We used to think that eye color is determined by just one gene, but in recent years scientists have found that it’s actually many genes acting in tandem, and tiny tweaks to any of those genes can result in a different color. Less than 1% have heterochromia (partly or completely different-colored eyes).Living in an English-speaking country, it might seem like different eye colors happen at a similar rate, but across the world, this is not the case at all. Red and “violet” eyes (very rare) come from having almost no melanin at all, so you actually see the color of the underlying blood vessels or it combines with the light scattering effect to produce violet. Hazel eyes have enough melanin that they don’t get the light scattering effect. Green eyes come from a combination of both types of melanin in low enough levels to also get a bit of the light scattering effect. The pigment itself isn’t blue, but the way the light scatters around the front layer of the iris ends up appearing blue - the same way the sky appears blue! ![]() ![]() Blue eyes, on the other hand, get their color from having relatively little eumelanin. There are two different types of melanin a person could have in their irises: eumelanin, which produces a rich chocolate brown color, and pheomelanin, which produces a range of amber, green, or hazel colors. Melanin absorbs light, even some UV light, which is important for the iris - the part of the eye that controls how much light enters the pupil. Human eye color comes from melanin, the same compound that determines skin and hair color. ![]()
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