While blue eyes are more sensitive to light during the day, people with blue eyes tend to see better at night – unless there are bright lights. In that case, the lack of melanin makes them as sensitive to light at night as they are during the day.
Benefits of Having Blue Eyes
Because less melanin allows for more light to pass through the eye, those with blue eyes can often tolerate longer periods of lower light. Blue eyes appear to have a lower risk of developing cataracts than brown eyes.
Light-eyed people (with blue or green eyes) have slightly better night vision because they have less pigment in the iris, which which leaves the iris more translucent and lets more light into the eye.
Disadvantages of Blue Eyes
Typically, people with blue eyes are likely to be more sensitive to light. With less pigment in the layers of the iris, they may be unable to block out the effects of bright fluorescent lights or sunlight. This condition of light sensitivity is called photophobia.
While lighter-colored eyes may be more sensitive to sunlight, they are not necessarily more sensitive to vision. In fact, blue eyes have better visual acuity than brown eyes. This means that blue-eyed people can see small details more clearly.
Having blue eyes has its advantages. They lower your risk of developing cataracts, for instance. However, they might increase your risk of health problems like type 1 diabetes and eye cancer. Protecting your eyes and getting regular check ups is important no matter the color of your irises.
Gray: The Rarest Eye Color
New classifications have determined that gray is its own standard color.1 (It was previously, and incorrectly, lumped in with blue.) With this change, gray now tops the list as the rarest eye color.
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.
Are They Rare? Grey eyes are one of the rarest eye colors. Less than 3% of the global population has grey eyes. They're most commonly found in people of Northern and Eastern European ancestry.
"Many studies have been performed and they all concluded the same thing - a majority of all people consider those with blue eyes to be slightly more attractive on average than people with brown or hazel 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.
There are plenty of blue-eyed Asians. This probably happens when the traditional blue-eyed allele comes into a family from a (possibly very distant) European ancestor. Blue eyes then resurface in a child generations later if they inherit the allele from both parents.
Finland – 89%
Sharing the rank of first in the world with Estonia, Finland also has a whopping 89 percent of its population with blue eyes. The stunning combination of blue eyes and sandy brown or blonde hair is much sought after in other countries, but very much the norm here.
The Single Gene Trait
There is one genetic variation, a human trait that has a single gene governing it, and that is eye color which is blue or brown. Brown eyes are dominant and blue eyes recessive.
“Can two parents with blue eyes have a child with brown eyes?” Yes, blue-eyed parents can definitely have a child with brown eyes.
Around 17 per cent of people have blue eyes, and when combined with 1-2 per cent having red hair, the odds of having both traits are around 0.17 per cent. That's 13 million people, out of the 7.6 billion on Earth. So with numbers this low, could redheads with blue eyes actually go extinct?
There's a little genetic tweak that makes the combination of red hair and blue eyes the rarest of them all.
They're frequently confused for blue eyes at first glance, but unlike blue eyes, grey eyes often have spots of gold and brown in the iris. Like most light eye colors, the perceived shade of grey-colored eyes comes from a low amount of melanin in the iris and the way that light hits the eye.
The pupil can change size with certain emotions, thus changing the iris color dispersion and the eye color. You've probably heard people say your eyes change color when you're angry, and that probably is true. Your eyes can also change color with age. They usually darken somewhat.
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.
Black hair and blue eyes is a much more rare combination than is blonde hair and blue eyes. The reason why these two traits are linked is that the genes responsible for hair and eye color happen to be close together on the same chromosomes.
The ethnic Miao people of Guizhou province from China, a subgroup of Hmong people, have been described as having blue eyes and blonde hair.
Genetics– The amount of melanin in the iris will decrease over time, just as hair color changes as we age, and can vary due to genetic determination.
Where in the world are the most green eyes? The highest concentration of people with green eyes is found in Ireland, Scotland, and northern Europe. In fact, in Ireland and Scotland, more than three-fourths of the population has blue or green eyes – 86 percent!
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.