What do hazel eyes mean

Interestingly enough, as diverse as hazel eyes appear, there's actually only one color in the irises of people with hazel eyes and that's brown, according to All About Vision. That brown color comes from a pigment that's called melanin, which is responsible for how dark or light a person's skin is as well.

The more melanin you have in your iris and your skin, the darker both will appear. That explains a lot. Okay, but if there's only one color in a hazel iris, why do we see green, yellow, and sometimes even a hint of blue? You can chalk that up to the Tyndall effect, which is similar to the mechanism that makes both the ocean and the sky look blue. Essentially, the way that light is scattered combined with the amount and placement of melanin determines how hazel eyes appear.

So where there's brown, there's a lot of melanin. Where there's yellow and green, there's less melanin and light being scattered in combination. And if there's blue, there's no pigment at all, at least not in the front layers of the iris. Fascinating, no? In addition to actors and models like Tyra Banks and Shailene Woodley, there are plenty of other celebs with hazel eyes out there.

From Shad Moss aka Lil' Bow Wow to Heidi Klum , when you turn on your television, chances are you'll see plenty of hazel-eyed beauties and gents in both shows and commercials. That's not surprising, taking into account how unique and multi-faceted hazel eyes can appear, especially in their more rare expressions. But chances are that hazel eyes are over-represented in the media, as not many people are lucky enough to have this distinct phenotype.

In fact, only five percent of the world's population has hazel peepers, according to an article in World Atlas. That's in comparison to the 79 percent of people on earth who have brown eyes, dwarfing every other eye color with its dominance. And in addition to that, eight to ten percent of the world's population have blue eyes , most of them living in various European countries like Finland, Estonia, Ireland, and Scotland. So hazel-eyed folks, celebrate yourselves! You're a rare bird, indeed.

Despite the fact that having hazel eyes is not very common, there are several other eye colors that are far more rare, according to an article in World Atlas. Given how complex and complicated genetics can be, that's not exactly a shock, though it certainly is an intriguing factoid. To start, roughly the same percentage of the world's population have amber eyes — five percent — thanks to lipochrome, a yellow pigment that makes the iris look yellow or coppery. However, this is more common in animals like dogs, fish, and birds than it is in humans.

After that, folks with green eyes clock in at two percent, thanks to lipochrome, low melanin levels, and the way light scatters in the eye. Truly those are one in a million. If you have hazel eyes, or if you've looked at different images of people with hazel eyes, you've probably noticed that often hazel eyes appear to change color.

That's certainly the case with Tyra Banks, for example, whose eyes can appear super green in some pictures, while they sometimes look more yellow and brown in others. The same is true for Jada Pinkett Smith, who passed on her riveting hazel peepers to her daughter, Willow Smith. Of course, science has a reason for that. According to an article in Owlcation , hazel eyes change color based on environmental factors such as the color of objects in a room and the amount and type of light that is filtering into the iris.

Additionally, the color shift is also dependent on how much melanin is in the iris. So if a person with hazel eyes with minimal melanin in their eye is wearing a green dress, their eyes will appear greener. And if a hazel-eyed person with a lot of melanin in their eye is wearing a brown dress, their eyes will look more brown. Boom, mystery solved! In elementary school, middle school, or high school, chances are you were taught that eye color is dependent on dominant and recessive genes, and were forced to diagram a bunch of Punnett Squares to prove it.

It followed, then, that brown eye color is dominant over all other eye colors, including hazel. So according to that model of genetic determination, blue-eyed parents couldn't have brown-eyed offspring, and brown-eyed parents could only have blue-eyed or green or hazel offspring if they both carried the recessive gene for those eye colors. But as it turns out, that model was way over-simplified in some ways and totally wrong in others. The newer, more current genetic research that's available about how we get eye color shows that there are 16 genes in play that make this determination.

That means that eye color isn't determined by a simple recessive or dominant gene; rather, it's reliant upon variations of several genes and how they interact with one another. That's why it's possible for blue-eyed parents to have children with hazel eyes. Although having hazel eyes is a beautiful thing, there are some things that come with this phenotype that aren't quite as lovely.

General Education. Wondering if you have hazel eyes? What are hazel eyes exactly? Read this guide for answers to all your hazel eye-related questions, including what the actual hazel eye color is, how someone can get hazel green eyes or hazel brown eyes, how rare hazel eyes are, and how to tell if you have hazel eyes. The defining feature of hazel eyes is their mix of colors. This is why hazel eyes appear different than brown, green, or blue eyes, which are a solid color.

There are two main types of hazel eyes: those with brown as the dominant color in the iris and those with green as the dominant color. While all hazel eyes will have a combination of green and brown colors, the difference in dominant colors is why hazel eyes can appear either mostly green or mostly brown. This variety in color can cause some confusion, but as long as there is a mixture of green and brown in the iris, the eyes are hazel. You probably guessed that your genetics the DNA you get from your mother and father determine what color eyes you have, but eye color is actually one of the more complicated genetic inheritance processes.

Once the genotype the actual genes of an individual is set, two factors influence eye phenotype how the eye color actually appears. People with darker eyes have more melanin in their eyes than people with lighter eyes, and light can be scattered in the stroma of the iris in a variety of ways.

People with hazel eyes have a moderate amount of melanin in their eyes to account for both the green and brown coloring. The melanin tends to be concentrated in the outer portion of the iris, so the inner part of the eye is often lighter than the outer part although sometimes this is flipped, so the inner part of the iris is darkest.

The way light scatters in hazel irises is a result of Rayleigh scattering , the same optical phenomenon that causes the sky to appear blue. However, hazel is definitely one of the rarer eye colors. T he eye color of most people is set at birth or soon after and remains the same for life.

Except for rare and serious eye diseases, when eye color does change, it happens slowly and is a permanent change. You may think your eyes change color depending on the day or have heard someone say that their eyes change color based on their mood, temperature, etc. Eye irises can look very different under different amounts and types of light, and light also affects the size of your eye pupil the black circle in the center of your eye.

Pupil size can be affected by your emotions, which is why some people may think their eyes change color when they are feeling angry, sad, etc. Hazel eyes can often appear to change colors more than other eye colors.

Because they contain a variety of pigments, not just a solid hue, they can look very different under different lighting. If you really want a certain eye shade, can you use technology to change your eye color? Hazel eyes are used to describe the eye color of mostly white populations where there is a mix of people with blue, green, and brown eyes, upping the genetic chance for hazel eyes to occur.

However, people of other races have also flashed some hazel-colored peepers, supermodel Tyra Banks one of the more notable examples. Another famous holder of hazel eyes would be first-ever American Idol winner, Kelly Clarkson. This is not meant to be a formal definition of hazel eyes like most terms we define on Dictionary.

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