The color of babies' irises actually depends on melanin, a protein secreted by special cells called melanocytes that also give your baby's skin its color. Babies whose heritage is dark-skinned are usually born with brown eyes, whereas Caucasian newborns tend to be born with blue or gray eyes.
It's a common belief that all babies are born with blue eyes, but this is actually a myth. A baby's eye colour at birth depends on genetics. Brown is also common, for example, but a newborn baby's eyes can range in colour from slate grey to black.
Caucasian babies are born with hardly any melanin, resulting in light blue eyes and cream-colored skin. The more the baby is exposed to sunlight, the more melanin levels will rise, resulting in the changing of eye, hair and even skin color.
Having blue eyes at birth has nothing to do with genetics. Many babies, even those of non-white ethnicities, are born with blue eyes. However, genetics play a role in what eye color the baby will end up with.
Scientists believe that it is possible to trace all blue-eyed people back to a common ancestor, who likely had a genetic mutation that reduced the amount of melanin in the iris. Most people with blue eyes are of European descent.
Your children inherit their eye colors from you and your partner. It's a combination of mom and dad's eye colors – generally, the color is determined by this mix and whether the genes are dominant or recessive. Every child carries two copies of every gene – one comes from mom, and the other comes from dad.
Babies whose heritage is dark-skinned are usually born with brown eyes, whereas Caucasian newborns tend to be born with blue or gray eyes. Since melanocytes respond to light, at birth a baby may have eyes that appear gray or blue mostly due to the lack of pigment and because he's been in a dark womb up until now.
Determining the rarest eye color... not so straightforward
Green is the rarest eye color of the more common colors. Outside of a few exceptions, nearly everyone has eyes that are brown, blue, green or somewhere in between. Other colors like gray or hazel are less common.
Fact: Two blue-eyed parents can have a child with brown eyes, although it's very rare. Likewise, two brown-eyed parents can have a child with blue eyes, although this is also uncommon.
Approximately 8% to 10% of the global population have blue eyes. A 2002 study found that the prevalence of blue eye color among the white population in the United States to be 33.8% for those born from 1936 through 1951, compared with 57.4% for those born from 1899 through 1905.
Your child's newborn eye color may be blue, but that doesn't mean it'll necessarily stay that way. “Babies' eyes tend to change color sometime between 6 and 12 months, but it can take as long as three years until you see the true color of what their eyes are going to be,” says Barbara Cohlan, MD, a neonatologist at St.
A couple's children can have almost any eye color, even if it does not match those of either parent. Currently it is thought that eye color is determined by about six genes, so you can imagine how inheritance of eye color becomes very complicated.
Blue is the second most common eye color globally, with an estimated 8 to 10 % of people having blue eyes. A majority of these people are of European descent, however, Black people can be born with blue eyes even though it's pretty rare.
Iris color, just like hair and skin color, depends on a protein called melanin. We have specialized cells in our bodies called melanocytes whose job it is to go around secreting melanin. Over time, if melanocytes only secrete a little melanin, your baby will have blue eyes.
When broken down by gender, men ranked gray, blue, and green eyes as the most attractive, while women said they were most attracted to green, hazel, and gray eyes. Despite brown eyes ranking at the bottom of our perceived attraction scale, approximately 79% of the world's population sports melanin-rich brown eyes.
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.
Legendary actress Elizabeth Taylor's eyes were famous for being stunningly beautiful and distinct. Widely known for having the most striking eyes in Hollywood, Taylor had what appeared to be rare natural purple eyes.
Blond hair is most common in light-skinned infants and children, so much so that the term "baby blond" is often used for very light colored hair. Babies may be born with blond hair even among groups where adults rarely have blond hair, although such natural hair usually falls out quickly.
Brown Eyes: 45 percent. Blue Eyes: 27 percent. Hazel Eyes: 18 percent (Note: Hazel eyes consist of shades of brown and green.)
Do grandparents' eye color affect baby? Yes! Grandparents' eye color can also impact baby's eye color. Baby eye color is genetic, and genes pass from generation to generation.
Both parents have to pass along the blue eye gene in order for their child to have blue eyes. That doesn't necessarily mean that the parents themselves have to have blue eyes; it's possible they carry the gene, but it is recessive. However, a blue-eyed child is almost certain if both parents have blue eyes.
Genetically, you actually carry more of your mother's genes than your father's. That's because of little organelles that live within your cells, the mitochondria, which you only receive from your mother.
Unlike nuclear DNA, which comes from both parents, mitochondrial DNA comes only from the mother.