Hereditary Eye Color?

Question

I was wondering what would cause my eyes to change colors. When I was a baby I had dark blue eyes with a ring of light blue in the center and now they are a light grayish blue with a ring of yellow. My mom has hazel eyes with a ring of orange around her eyes, and I'm told my grandmother had the two colors also. So is it hereditary? Is it normal? Anyone else have that?

Answer 1

It's hereditary, but the answers are a lot more complicated now than it used to be thanks to advances in understanding genetics. It used to be thought that there were two genes, a recessive (blue) and a dominant (brown) one, that determined the colors of your eyes.

Now they're discovering that eye color has a lot more factors in it, partially from environment (similar to skin color, that's why people near the equator have darker skin/eyes than people who live farther away and don't have as much exposure to sunlight), and partly from diet (although you don't want to mess with this, because a poor diet results in sickly eyes, not to mention damage to your body).

But genetics plays a huge part, and ultimately it comes down to what your parents had.

Answer 2

It is hereditary, it is normal and I have it too.