I’m a Scientist is like school science lessons meet the X Factor! School students choose which scientist gets a prize of $1000 to communicate their work.
Scientists and students talk on this website. They both break down barriers, have fun and learn. But only the students get to vote.
This zone is the Organs Zone. It has scientists studying health and disease in various parts of our bodies. Who gets the prize? YOU decide!
There are two versions of this answer…the physical answer and the genetic answer.
Eye colour is determined by at least fifteen different genes…which means that the old genetic problem from high school biology of a child only having blue eyes if both parents have blue eyes is completely false. Pretty much any colour combination is possible from any set of parents!
Physically, it has to do with the pigment of the iris of the eye and what sort of light is scattered by the inside of the eye. Blue and green eyes are because of the same sort of light scatter that causes the blue sky. Maybe one of the other scientists has a better explanation for that one?
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Great answer, Carina!
Just like height, skin color and hair color, eye color is encoded in our genetic information (DNA), which is inherited from our parents.
I found an eye color calculator online (https://www.babymed.com/tools/eye-color-predictor) so maybe you can explore what the options for eye color there 🙂
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Great question.
The eye colour is the pigmentation of your iris, the “muscle” that determines how much light gets into your eye, and also helps with focusing (here’s a trick, when your in the bathroom next, look at the mirror staring at your pupil (the dark bit in the middle of your eye. then turn the light on and you’ll see your iris adjust! But don’t shine bright lights or anything into your eye because it’ll hurt really bad!!!)
But I digress… The colour of your iris depends on your genetic background.
Genetics is the study of your DNA. You inherit your 2 gene (DNA) copies from your mum and dad, one from each. They inherited theirs from their parents etc. The colour brown is dominant, so if you have one parent blue eyed and another brown, it’s most likely you’ll get brown eyes (it’s more complex, but I won’t bore you by going into more detail about genetic trees etc)
To further complicate things though, you can also get mutations. This can make each eye a different colour. Called Heterochromia, it’s a totally normal thing that some celebrities like Mila Kunis and Kate Bonsworth even have. And that’s their real eye colour, no coloured lenses!
Just goes to show how complicated things are in your body where such a simple question has such a complicated answer 😉
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Hi stullie – don’t have much to add here, nice responses by the other scientists! 🙂
What colour are your eyes?
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I was interested to read that the colour of your eyes reflects your ancestry. I have blue eyes. In the world, approximately 150 million people (2.2% of the total population) have blue eyes. Weirdly all can be traced back to a single ancestor who lived about 6000 years ago. Have you ever seen an animal with blue eyes? Apparently its really rare and in cats and dogs is often associated with deadness.
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