If you are wondering about the eyes your own children might have, think back to the eyes of your parents and grandparents, as well as your siblings. When the pigment develops and turns brown, they eyes then look brown. Without the pigment melanin developing in the main part of the iris, the eye appears blue due to the way light interacts with parts of the eye. We now know that the blue color of the eye is not because the iris is actually blue. In areas where there are people with lighter eyes, it may take six months to a year to find out what color the child’s eyes will turn out to look like. So, a baby with blue or grey eyes is most likely going to have brown eyes eventually, especially in parts of the world where most people have brown eyes because the production of melanin in the iris will increase with age. Blue actually means there is very little pigment. The flecks of other colors like amber can actually come from other pigments. It also explains why there can be flecks of different colors in the eyes. The complexity explains why some people have varying shades of blue or purple eyes, or the wide range from green to hazel to amber to brown. ![]() One called “OCA2” is involved in pigmentation of other parts of the body and also involved in the variety of eye colors. Now scientists know that baby eye color is not that simple, although the inheritance usually looks like it is. ![]() ![]() Brown eyes tend to be dominant over green eyes. Green eyes and other variations like hazel are not so straightforward, although they tend to be dominant over blue. Similarly, two parents with blue eyes should only have blue-eyed children. If either parent had two brown genes, none of the children would have anything but brown eyes. So one out of four children, statistically speaking, might have blue eyes. If someone with both genes and brown eyes marries someone with similar genetics, their children will get one gene from each parent.īrown (father) – Brown (mother) – Brown eyesīrown (father) - Blue (mother) – Brown eyesīlue (father) – Brown (mother) – Brown eyesīlue (father) – Blue (mother) – Blue eyes Your baby eye color would probably be brown, but if there was a blue gene on each side, you could have a child with blue eyes. If you marry someone with brown eyes, that person could have the same genes. So, if you have brown eyes, you could have two brown eye genes, or one brown and one blue. This means that anyone with a blue and a brown gene will have brown eyes. Brown is the dominant eye color, with blue being recessive. ![]() It was thought to be an example of Mendelian genetics, named for a monk named Gregor Mendel who described the genetics of pea plants in the middle 1800’s.įollowing Mendelian genetics, each child needs two genes for eye color, one from each parent. Babies have very little pigment at birth, so most infants around the world have light eyes.Įye color used to be considered a very simple trait that parents passed down to their children. The eye color actual comes from pigment in the iris, the area around the black pupil in the center of the eye. Essentially all newborn babies have light-colored eyes that appear blue or gray.
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