In a day’s time, the chances that you meet someone with green eyes are pretty low. You may have never thought twice about it, but this isn’t by chance. Our observance of green-eyed people is so low because green is one of the rarest eye colors in the entire world. Due to the low occurrence of interacting with a green-eyed person on a regular basis, it may feel rather mysterious when staring into a set of green eyes. But there are more interesting factors behind whether a person is born with green eyes or not than you’d believe, and even more strange facts about the people who do possess them. For facts you’ve never known about these rare-eyed individuals, here is the truth about green eyes.
Statistics prove that green eyes are quite rare.
It’s not a coincidence that there is likely only one or two people with green eyes at your job or in your circle of friends. 55 to 79 percent of the world’s population has brown eyes. In stark comparison, green-eyed people only make up 2 percent of everyone on earth. Even rarer are gray, violet, red and heterochromia, which means two-toned eyes.
People aren’t born with green eyes.
According to scientific research, no newborn is ever born with green eyes. Research tells us that every baby is actually born with either gray or blue eyes. Then after birth, the brown pigment melanin begins to secrete in the irises. The levels of melanin that eventually form is what determines the ultimate eye color of a baby. This process can take up to twelve months to completely finish, so new parents can expect to know the permanent of the color of a child’s eye around the one-year mark.
No one really has green eyes.
It may appear that you or someone you know has green eyes, but this is just our sight interpretation of how light interacts with and is absorbed by color. People who have appear to have green eyes actually have a pigmentation blend of light brown and yellowish specks and something called Rayleigh scattering. Rayleigh scattering occurs in the absence of melanin, and results in longer wavelengths of light passing easier through and getting absorbed to the back of eye. These factors together combined to create the appearance of those piercing green eyes we perceive.
Green eyes are not equally distributed between men and women.
Studies dating back as early as 1985 have revealed that women are more likely to have green eyes than men. Scientists have not discovered the reason this may be true, but have detected that greater percentages of women have green eyes than men in various parts of the world. Researchers do offer that more studies are needed before this finding can be considered irrefutable fact.
Some places on earth are more densely populated with green-eyed people.
Green eyes are also not equally distributed by geographical location. A staggering 86 percent of the population in Ireland and Scotland both have either green or blue eyes. And even more shocking, 87% of men and 89% of women in Iceland have either blue or green eyes. It has been suggested that green eyes are most popular in populations with the Celtic or Germanic origin.