Do I have a rare eye color?
Have you ever gazed into a mirror at your (most likely) brown eyes and wondered, "Why are my eyes this color? And how many people have eyes just like mine?" If you have, you're not alone. Many people have wondered the same thing.
There's a simple answer related to melanin production and genes, but that's no fun. Instead, let's look at how eye color is distributed, where it comes from, and how rare your eye color truly is.
Population Breakdown
In humans, eye color breaks down into four main groups: blues, browns, greens, and hazel. That's not to say that all green eyes are exactly the same. It simply means that someone's eye color is a majority one shade with flecks or hues of another color.
These eye colors are found across the globe and each exists in different concentrations dependent on genetic background. According to World Atlas:
- Brown is the eye color of roughly 67% of the world's population,
- Blue is second with an apx. 9%
- Hazel is third with about 5%
- And green is fourth with only 2%
Regardless of your eye color, you're probably the only person on the planet with that exact combo of colors that make up your eye color. Your iris (the part of your eye where the color resides) is more unique than a fingerprint and it's incredibly unlikely anyone has the same patterns as you.
Heterochromia
While not technically its own eye 'color' we thought it deserved a notable mention. Heterochromia is most often a genetic attribute that presents as having two different eye colors. It can also occur from an eye injury or other underlying diseases if it develops later in life. There are two types of heterochromia: partial and complete.
- Complete heterochromia is when one of your eyes is a totally different color than the other.
- Partial heterochromia is only having part of one eye a different color.
Fortunately, heterochromia is typically benign and is just something cool you get to talk about at parties. It's a great ice breaker since it's incredibly rare - it's estimated that only 200,000 people in the U.S. have heterochromia, or .0006% of the population
Sorry green-eyed people, but you're not the rarest of them all, after all.