Thursday, June 2, 2011

I Must Ask . . . What Color Are Your Eyes?

Heredity: transmission of the physical and psychical qualities of parents to their offspring; the biological law by which living beings tend to repeat their characteristics in their descendants.

My eyes are blue. Mr. Bug's eyes are brown {he says hazel, but they are brown}. Both of the Little Bugs have brown eyes. Why is that so? I went to the source of all knowledge {the internet} and according to the latest research {and it must be true because it is on the internet} there are three genes which affect eye color: one that controls blue & brown, one that controls hazel & green and a third that modifies the other two.

This article summed it up nicely:
Children can have completely different eye colors than either of their parents. But if both parents have brown eyes, it's most likely that their children also will have brown eyes.

The darker colors tend to dominate, so brown tends to win out over green, and green tends to win out over blue.

However, a brown/blue parent mix doesn't automatically produce a brown-eyed child.

In my nuclear family, we're split right down the middle as far as eye color goes. My dad, one brother, one sister and I all have blue eyes. My mom, the other brother and the other two sisters have brown eyes. Mr. Bug's parents both have brown eyes and I think that only two or three of his seven siblings have blue and the rest tend towards hazel and brown. And the most interesting study in eye color in families I have encountered is my blue-eyed neighbor. She has a blue-eyed husband and they have 10 {yes, really, ten} blue-eyed children.

It seems that chance and randomness tend to win out over any calculable detection method where eye color is concerned. I thought this probability predictor of your children's eye color was really a lot of fun. I already know what color my kids' eyes are and assumed that if we had any more kids, they'd all have brown eyes too. Brown is the most likely color {72.7%} but there is a slim chance for either blue {13.6%} or green {also 13.6%}.

And so today, I must ask: what color are your eyes?

I also wanted to send out a huge thank-you to everyone who voted last week when I wanted to know your shoe size. Now I know who I can borrow shoes from :wink:.

8 comments:

Impera Magna said...

My eyes are hazel... brown and green.

My father's eyes were brown and my mother's blue/grey.

Of the five kids, there were one with brown, one with hazel, one with blue and two with blue/grey.

The kids' father had blue eyes... my son has brown and my daughter blue.

My DIL has green eyes... my grandsons... 2 have brown and one has blue!

My SIL has blue eyes... and my granddaughters both have blue eyes.

Love this kind of stuff...

pinksuedeshoe said...

Blue is definitely the most common in my family, me and my twin sister are the only ones with green. When I was in biology in highschool we did a whole gene chart that would predict the probability of eye color based on dominant and recessive genes. Blue is more dominant than green, but it all depends on which gene you get from your parents. Glad I got green! And Creamie's eyes were deep dark blue when she was born, bright blue when she was about 3 months old and now they are turning green. Yay!

Paulette said...

Mine are a darker blue, bordering on navy. My daughter's are deep brown, like her dad's and his mother's.

Gene Black said...

My eyes are blue.
Dad's are brown, Mom's are hazel, Sister and Brother both brown.

However, on both sides of the family at least one grandparent had blue eyes.

I always wanted brown eyes when I was young. Now I know that blue eyes are special. Ha ha.

Shay said...

According to the probability predictor my daughter is adopted or I was fooling around on my husband...neither of which is true to my knowledge. Obviously she's a genetic mutant.

Anyhoo...

Im blue eyed but always wanted brown eyes. Maybe I should buy contacts.

Mom said...

My eyes were always brown but now days I am saying they are hazle. I think they have lost some of the beep color they used to have.

Sarah Craig said...

I know this sounds weird, but I had blue eyes when I was little, hazel eyes when I was an older teenager to my late 20s, then they've gradually turned a pretty shade of green! I hope the green sticks.....

Mom's eyes were darker blue, Dad's were icy blue. I don't know where the green came from!

Jill said...

Actually, my eyes are hazel. They change from brown to green and back again. Often I have both colors. My hubby's eyes are a blue and green hazel. Mouse has blue, blue eyes like his Grandpa, (our dad) and Lizard Boy has green and brown hazel, like me, although sometimes they seem to have a hint of blue in them, too.