# Very blue eyes. Do you have them or know anyone who does?



## Sangmu (Feb 18, 2014)

In articles about eye colour mutations, I consistently read the term "light eyes" to describe blue eyes. 

This irritates me somewhat because I have *DARK* blue eyes. Further, I've seem many people with brown and green eyes who have much lighter eyes than me.

I've seen tons of blue eyes in my lifetime - but the only person I've ever seen with eyes as dark blue as mine was my grandmother.

I'm not here to brag or seem rare. It actually makes me a but sad that I'm a lone dark bluey. Even if I google "dark blue eyes" I cannot find eyes that look like mine, unless it's eyes of an infant.

If blue eyes are apparently caused by _lack_ of pigment - a recessive trait - how the hell can the blue be almost as dark as my pupils?

View attachment 382362


----------



## Word Dispenser (May 18, 2012)

Mine are also dark blue, but there's a central heterochromia which is golden that can make them appear green.


----------



## muslamicinfidel (Aug 2, 2015)

So i was looking at laser eye surgery procedures to have brown eyes changed to blue a couple of days ago. I learnt some interesting facts. Essentially we all have the exact same colour eyes. The difference comes with how it's perceived, which is due to the amount and type of melanin in the front layer of the iris and how light interacts with it. I'm assuming based on this table that you have a greater amount of Eumelanin in the front layer of your iris than light blue eyes but less than those with brown eyes.


Melanin Content and Eye Color
*Eye color*
*Melanin Presence on Front Layer of Iris*
*Melanin Presence on Back Layer of Iris*
*Dominant Pigment Type*
Brown
Heavy​Normal​Eumelanin​Blue
Light​Normal​Eumelanin​Gray
Even less than blue​Normal​Eumelanin​Green
More than blue eyes, less than brown​Normal​Pheomelanin​Hazel
More than green, less than brown​Normal​Pheomelanin and Eumelanin​Amber
Heavy​Normal​Pheomelanin​Red or Violet
None or extremely little​None or extremely little​n/a​



Also, it's a slight myth that any one gene is responsible for eye colour and it is either recessive or dominant. I think so far they have determined it to be around 16 different genes that are responsible for eye colour.


----------



## Gossip Goat (Nov 19, 2013)

Grav3yardgirl has very, very, very blue eyes.

I went to HS with a kid who also had dark blue eyes, from afar you couldn't tell his eyes were blue, but they were just dark.


----------



## Metalize (Dec 18, 2014)

That's an odd chart. I usually can't tell the difference between what someone terms "hazel" and just a lighter shade of brown (no offense to hazel-eyed people, it just seems that a lot of people use that term to sound special), so it's surprising to read that blue eyes are technically closer to brown than the hazel ones. 

I'd describe mine as gray or gray-green, because the eyedropper tool pulls up a color that is decidedly not blue. My grandpa has genuinely vivid blue eyes, probably on the lighter side though.


----------



## muslamicinfidel (Aug 2, 2015)

Metasentient said:


> That's an odd chart. I usually can't tell the difference between what someone terms "hazel" and just a lighter shade of brown (no offense to hazel-eyed people, it just seems that a lot of people use that term to sound special), so it's surprising to read that blue eyes are technically closer to brown than the hazel ones.
> 
> I'd describe mine as gray or gray-green, because the eyedropper tool pulls up a color that is decidedly not blue. My grandpa has genuinely vivid blue eyes, probably on the lighter side though.


I was surprised too and wondered exactly how they are able to laser brown eyes blue. This is my source for the table:

Rarest Eye Color in Humans

I also have this article i found on eye pigmentation.

http://www.evergreen.edu/upwardbound/docs/eyecolor.pdf 

Strumm basically says that _eye color itself comes from a combination of two black (eumelanin) and yellow pigments (pheomelanin) in the iris of the eye. If there is no pigment (melanin) in the front part of the iris, the result is blue eyes. An increasing proportion of the yellow melanin, in combination with the black melanin, results in shades of colors between brown and blue, including green and hazel. _


----------



## Thalassa (Jun 10, 2010)

Uh...I've known people who have various shades of eye color, people who had extreme light sensitivity because their eyes were such a light clear blue, but I honestly think dark blue is probably more common, not unique. Even dark blue is considered lighter though than most hazel or brown eyes, which make up the majority of the world's population. I have seen very light hazel eyes that almost looked like florescent green glowing. ..but those are rarer.


----------



## Thalassa (Jun 10, 2010)

Metasentient said:


> That's an odd chart. I usually can't tell the difference between what someone terms "hazel" and just a lighter shade of brown (no offense to hazel-eyed people, it just seems that a lot of people use that term to sound special), so it's surprising to read that blue eyes are technically closer to brown than the hazel ones.
> 
> I'd describe mine as gray or gray-green, because the eyedropper tool pulls up a color that is decidedly not blue. My grandpa has genuinely vivid blue eyes, probably on the lighter side though.


Hazel eyes look green in a certain light. I remember being shocked as a teenager to realize my grandfather's eyes looked green when we were standing in the ocean. That's hazel. My eyes are hazel too, but only a few people notice, so I can understand your insistence that they're light brown.

I think hazel applies to blue-green eyes too though, any mixture of two shades, is what I thought.


----------



## Carpentet810 (Nov 17, 2013)

We all have odd eye colors in my family. My father has Colt Hot Blue coloring. My mom has Yellow-green eyes. My eyes tend to be polychromic depending on light levels, light sources, room colors and clothing colors. Rromani tend to have odd eye colours.


----------



## Sangmu (Feb 18, 2014)

Thalassa said:


> Uh...I've known people who have various shades of eye color, people who had extreme light sensitivity because their eyes were such a light clear blue, but I honestly think dark blue is probably more common, not unique. Even dark blue is considered lighter though than most hazel or brown eyes, which make up the majority of the world's population. I have seen very light hazel eyes that almost looked like florescent green glowing. ..but those are rarer.


I've never met anyone with eyes as dark blue as mine or even close to it. The fact that I cannot find one non-Photoshopped picture on the internet of an adult with dark blue eyes is further testament to my recent epiphany that it's rare.

My boyfriend has honey-brown eyes and mine are much darker than his. I just find it odd that he would be described as having dark eyes and mine would be described as light. But as someone has pointed out, this is simply due to the fact that blue eyes most often _are_ medium to light - not dark.

Very light to light-medium blue eyes ("baby blues") are extremely common in Northern Europe and make up the majority of the blue eyed population in the world.

My motive for beginning this thread was to find an answer as to why/how my iris could be this dark but I've not really found a satisfactory answer. Because this is a trivial issue, I'm going to take the theory that I have lots of collagen in my stroma and run with it.


----------



## Swordsman of Mana (Jan 7, 2011)

WhateverLolaWants said:


> In articles about eye colour mutations, I consistently read the term "light eyes" to describe blue eyes.
> 
> This irritates me somewhat because I have *DARK* blue eyes. Further, I've seem many people with brown and green eyes who have much lighter eyes than me.
> 
> ...


you have very pretty eyes. I don't know why you're complaining :tongue:


----------



## Fredward (Sep 21, 2013)

Yes. ~shrug~

Eyes like a frozen Mediterranean ocean caught in the first blush of sunrise on a cloudless day. With several kiloliters of really light blue dye thrown in for good measure.


----------



## Sangmu (Feb 18, 2014)

Swordsman of Mana said:


> you have very pretty eyes. I don't know why you're complaining :tongue:


I'm not!!! Just curious if anyone here has in depth knowledge of the human iris. I wanted to know why someone can have very light blue eyes and another (me) very dark blue. No one seems to be able to explain it. As I look further into it, it seems it's not as simple as the "dominant recessive genes" thing often presented in articles and textbooks.

And thank you.


----------



## Kurt Wagner (Aug 2, 2014)

My grandfather's are greyish blue. And some of my cousins have baby blue eyes. Very pretty IMO.



WhateverLolaWants said:


> I'm not!!! Just curious if anyone here has in depth knowledge of the human iris. I wanted to know why someone can have very light blue eyes and another (me) very dark blue. No one seems to be able to explain it. As I look further into it, it seems it's not as simple as the "dominant recessive genes" thing often presented in articles and textbooks.
> 
> And thank you.


Eyes get darker too, don't they? My sister's eyes were blue and kind of turned hazel. Do you think your eyes might have mutated somehow and gotten darker?


----------



## Kurt Wagner (Aug 2, 2014)

Swordsman of Mana said:


> you have very pretty eyes. I don't know why you're complaining :tongue:


I knew I'd find you here.


----------



## Swordsman of Mana (Jan 7, 2011)

Luke Skywalker said:


> I knew I'd find you here.


the question is, what are you going to do now? :wink:


----------



## Kurt Wagner (Aug 2, 2014)

Swordsman of Mana said:


> the question is, what are you going to do now? :wink:


I don't know, will my actions have consequences?


----------



## Intricate Mystic (Apr 3, 2010)

Just a cursory inspection of the scientific literature at Pubmed suggests that the genetic pathways of eye pigmentation are quite complex. Here's an example of an attempt to figure out blue eye color in humans, just to give you an idea: Blue eye color in humans may be caused by a perfectly associated founder mutation in a regulatory element located within the HERC2 gene inhibiting ... - PubMed - NCBI . The articles you have read about eye color seem to be generalizations that group eye color into a few large categories. As we have seen just from some of the posts in this thread (Word Dispenser: "Mine are also dark blue, but there's a central heterochromia which is golden that can make them appear green"), there are in reality many subtleties to eye color that cause it to be a phenomenon of complex genetic origin. 

My eyes are dark blue, by the way. My father and son also have dark blue eyes.


----------



## Swordsman of Mana (Jan 7, 2011)

Luke Skywalker said:


> I don't know, will my actions have consequences?


----------



## Kurt Wagner (Aug 2, 2014)

Swordsman of Mana said:


>


gifs can only do so much. Call me when you mean business.


That's the second thread we begin to derail, I believe? You really are up to no good my darling.


----------

