Why are eyes different colours?
In: 3
Sometimes it’s genetic mosaicism, meaning that different parts of the body have differing genomes. This can happen due to an early mutation in part of a developing embryo, or when there were two embryos initially, but they fused into one organism without any obvious indication of it. It’s not common, but apparently not super rare either.
Or possibly one eye is just discolored, like you can have a discolored patch on your skin, the same can happen with an eye.
Eye color comes from the amount of melanin (the pigment that determines our skin color) in the iris; this is determined by genetics. More melanin blocks more light from inside the eye creating a darker color.
Blue/grey eyes have the least amount of melanin, and the color comes from light reflecting from inside someone’s eye.
Green and hazel eyes have a ‘middle’ amount of melanin; light reflecting from both the melanin and inside the eye are visible.
Brown eyes have the most melanin and the color comes almost entirely from light reflecting off the melanin and very little from light reflecting from inside the eye.
edit: reordered for clarity
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