“Pale Blue Eyes” by the Velvet Underground. “Sweet Child O’ Mine” by Guns N’ Roses. “I Still Miss Someone” by Johnny Cash. Those are just a few of the utterly ubiquitous amounts of songs out there about blue eyes, usually about someone yearning or pining for a lover with eyes the color of the sky. So there’s definitely a cultural obsession with those of the blue-eyed persuasion, whether it’s celebrating their unique beauty or expressing fear about their alleged icy cold-hearts.
All emotions and broken hearts aside, there’s a lot to learn about not just blue eyes themselves, but also the people who peer out at the world through them. Whether it’s due to weird scientific facts, related health conditions, or just plain genetics, those with baby blues are just a little bit different than their brown-eyed counterparts. So without further ado, read on to learn the truth about blue eyes and the population of people who have them.
Even though blue eyes appear to be, well, blue, they’re actually not blue at all. It sounds crazy, but here’s no such thing as blue pigment when it comes to our peepers – you’re either melanated or not very melanated at all. And if you’re melanated in each layer of the iris like the majority of the human race, then you would have brown eyes that are actually brown (via Gizmodo) – no optical illusions there!
So if there’s no pigment in the front layers of the iris of blue eyed-people (there is some melanin in the back layer), what mechanism is at work that makes them look blue? According to the American Academy of Ophthalmology, blue eyes look blue for the same reason that both the ocean and the sky appear to be blue: it’s simply a trick of the light. This is called the Tyndall Effect, which is the way that light scatters in blue eyes, giving rise to the blue appearance. Fascinating, no?
Only a small percentage of people have blue eyes
Although there are a ton of actors, models, and other celebs who have blue eyes, which can make these colored eyes seem like a common asset (at least on television), not all that many people are lucky enough to boast baby blues. In fact, the most common eye color throughout the entire world is brown, according to an article in World Atlas. Specifically, 79 percent of human beings have eyes the color of coffee and chocolate, dwarfing every other eye color as the dominant phenotype.
So just how many people have blue eyes around the world? World Atlas estimates that approximately 8 to 10 percent of human beings are blessed with cerulean peepers. Of course, plenty of folks who don’t have blue eyes can fake it with contacts, as celebs like Selena Gomez and Nicki Minaj have done on occasion. But you can always tell the difference between a natural blue and an artificial blue – it’s a pretty hard color to fake.
But blue eyes are not the rarest eye color
Although the odds of having blue eyes are markedly lower than having brown eyes, blue isn’t the rarest of all eye colors. In fact, it’s actually the second most common eye color out there, according to an article in World Atlas, which is a little surprising given that 8 to 10 percent isn’t exactly a huge swath of the population.
But it turns out that having hazel eyes is less common than having either blue or brown eyes, as only 5 percent of people have that color in their irises. Additionally, approximately 5 percent of the world’s population have amber-colored eyes, although sometimes http://hookupdate.net/escort-index/orlando/ this is confused with the hazel pattern. Less common than either of those shades is green, as only 2 percent of the world’s population is blessed with that phenotype.
