Things You Didn’t Know About Your Eyes

1. You shed around 98 feet of eyelashes in your lifetime

Image Source/ Reddit

Human eyelashes have a lifespan of around five months. You shed your old eyelashes regularly to allow room for new ones to come through. If we collected all of your eyelashes over your life time, it would amount to about 98 feet of eyelashes! That's crazy!

2. Your eyes can get sunburn!

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Everyone love spending time in the sun, and most people know to wear sunscreen to protect your skin. But not everyone knows your eyes can get sunburn too! You should always wear sunglasses when it's sunny to protect your eyes from the UV light which can cause long term damage to your eyes if you aren't careful.

3. Every person with blue eyes is related

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You read that right. If you have blue eyes, you share a single common ancestor with all other blue-eyed people around the world. All humans used to have brown eyes, it was a genetic mutation that appeared around 6,000 to 10,000 years ago which produced blue eyes and has been passed down many genetic lines since then.

4. 'Blind' people who were born with sight can still 'see' when they dream

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Some people who are born being able to see, but sadly lose their sight, still have the ability to 'see' when they dream. Researchers think this may be to do with their memory, as someone who is born blind has never been able to perceive objects in any detail to form these memories.

5. Your retinas see images upside down. Your brain flips the image for you!

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Everything you look at, you are actually seeing it upside down. Your brain flips this image the right way round for you (so you don't get confused). Just like a camera, your eye 'looks' and sends the data back to your brain, but your brain does the 'seeing'.

6. Eyes are 550 million years old!

Image Source/ Science

It is thought that the first eye appeared over 550 million years ago. The very first lifeforms didn't have eyes like humans and most animals do now. We all started out as single-celled organisms that used photoreceptor proteins to detect light and 'see' that way. Over time, we have evolved from those and eyeballs were formed.

7. People with blue eyes are more likely to be alcoholics!

Image Source/ Marie Claire

Studies done in America have suggested that there is a connection between having blue eyes and becoming dependant on alcohol. Meaning they are more likely to become alcoholics than people with brown eyes. Multiple sources report this link, but no one seems quite sure on why they are connected.

8. No contact lenses can be lost behind your eyes!

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Mythbusting time! No, your contact lenses cannot get lost behind your eyes! There is literally nowhere for them to go. The muscles and membranes in your eye make this impossible, and even if your contact lens is stuck it will eventually move into a position on your eye where it can be seen and easily removed.

9. It's ALMOST impossible to sneeze with your eyes open!

Image Source/ Healthline

The original myth is that if you sneeze with your eyes open they will pop out of your head. This is FALSE! In fact, it is very, very difficult to sneeze with your eyes open as you are overriding the natural reflex of closing your eyes. Although, people have proven it is actually possible with a great amount of effort and it did not result in any eyeballs popping out.

10. You can read someones emotions from their eyes

Image Source/ Reddit

You might have heard this before, but it is genuinely true! If you are looking at someone you love, oxytocin and dopamine (your love hormones) get a boost, and this boost acts on your nervous system in multiple ways. Not only does it make you feel happier, but it causes your pupils to dilate and become bigger! They may also dilate if you are scared due to the adrenaline response.

11. Irises are much more unique than fingerprints

Image Source/ Daily Mail

Fingerprint identification is used all over the world for security due to the unique characteristics you can use to identify people. Your irises (the coloured part of your eye) actually have 256 unique markers, making them a much more secure way of identifying people!

12. Eyes cannot be transplanted

Image Source/ University of Oxford

Eye transplants don't exist. Yet. There are at least one million nerves connecting your eye to your brain so it is too complex to complete a transplant. However, some structures of the eye, like the cornea, have been successfully transplanted for years now. This is sometimes done to cure conditions like Keratoconus.

13. Ommetaphobia is the fear of eyeballs

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If you have an extreme fear of eyes then you have Ommetaphobia, and you probably aren't reading this article! It may be considered irrational by some, as eyes aren't exactly dangerous, but it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. It may very well interfere with your everyday life and will definitely cause you some anxiety when you have to visit an eye doctor!

14. Your eye muscles are the fastest in your body

Image Source/ Reddit

"In the blink of an eye!" is a popular phrase used because your eye muscles are the fastest muscles in your body. A blink typically lasts around 100-150 milliseconds, which is very, very quick! The average person blinks anywhere from 15 to 20 times in a minute.

15. Your eyes are nearly 50 times better than your iPhone camera!

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Some of the best cameras in the world have around 50 megapixels. Your brand new iPhone 13 has around 12. If your eyes were a digital camera, they would have around 576 megapixels! So no matter how good your camera says it is, it's not a patch on what you can see in real life.

16. Your baby develops eyes around 2 weeks after conception

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Probably before you even know you're pregnant, your baby has already started to develop their eyes. It takes just two weeks from conception for the early parts of our eyes to form, but they have a lot more growing and developing to do before birth and even after birth.

17. The cornea is the only tissues in your body with no blood vessels

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The cornea is the clear window of your eyes. Unlike most other tissues in the body, your cornea doesn't contain any blood vessels. It is actually DANGEROUS if you have blood vessels growing into your cornea and it must be treated immediately, often with corticosteroids.

18. The eyes are the second most complex organ in our body

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After your brain, your eyes are the second most complex organs in your body. Rightly so! As what would you do without them? Your eyes have over two million working parts and have more than one million nerve fibres that each connects to your one brain.

19. Green is the rarest eye colour

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The most common eye colour is brown! Around 70-80% of the world's population have brown eyes, but only 2% have green eyes! Interestingly, you can still be born with green eyes even if everyone else in your family has brown eyes. These genetic traits can appear many generations later.

20. Your eyes heal super quickly

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If you get a scratch on the front of your eye, it is often very painful due to the crazy amount of nerves in your cornea. However, it normally heals very quickly! It can take just 48 hours for your cornea to heal itself from a minor scratch if the proper care is taken.

21. Heterochromia means your eyes are two different colours

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David Bowie was well known for his identifiable different coloured eyes. This is called Heterochromia! Sometimes both your eyes are completely different colours and sometimes just a section of your eye is a different colour to the rest. It is often just the way you are born and nothing to worry about, just a quirk in your appearance.

22. You can't cry until you're at least 6 weeks old

Image Source/ Smithsonian Magazine

Anyone with a newborn is going to disagree with this immediately BUT your baby may be crying but they aren't producing any tears! Your tear ducts are still developing when you are born and aren't ready for around 6 to 8 weeks after birth. So your baby may be screaming, but they aren't crying real tears.

23. Your eyes automatically protect you from danger

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Fight or Flight! It's amazing how your body reacts. If your brain detects something dangerous flying towards you at high speed, you will automatically close your eyes. You won't even think first, it's a natural reaction to protect our eyes from harm.

24. Your newborn baby can't see colours

Image Source/ Reddit

When a baby is born, its eyes are around 2/3rds the size of its adult eyes and are very much still developing. The photoreceptor cells that see light and detail, in addition to the cone cells which perceive colour are not fully ready yet, meaning newborn babies cannot see in a lot of detail and can't see any colours until around 2 months old.

25. 4 out of 5 people who are blind don't need to be

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In the third world, due to lack of access to medical services, many treatable or preventable eye conditions are either not picked up or have no available treatment. Things like cataracts, trachoma or simply needing glasses, can lead to blindness, but are all easily treatable conditions if we have the right intervention.

26. Your eyes have blind spots you never even notice

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Each one of your eyes has a blind spot. The blind spot is where your optic nerve enters your retina and is in a different place in each eye. You will never notice these blind spots in everyday life as your brain takes details seen from your other eye to fill in the gap.

27. You have two eyes to give you depth perception

Image Source/ Zenni Optical

You would look a bit strange if you just had one eye in the middle of your head. But there is a much more complex reason to why we have two eyes than just how we look. Both of your eyes see images from different angles. Your brain puts these images together so we can judge how far away an object is, called depth perception.

28. The eye muscle is the most active in the human body

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Your eyes are controlled by six extraocular muscles, which allow you to look up and down and side to side. These muscles are also responsible for much more complex movements, like involuntary movement of your eyes, called saccades, where both eyes move together to different targets every 50 to 60 milliseconds.

29. Your eyelashes protect your eyes from imposters

Image Source/ Reddit

We must not forget your eyelashes! They are also a very important structure and are tasked with protecting your eyes at all time. They make sure no dirt or other unwanted things enter your eyes. In addition to your eyebrows, which stop things like sweat from reaching your eyes.

30. We can see around 10 million different colours

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I bet you didn't even think 10 million different colours existed. It is too many to comprehend! But your eyes see them all. Every subtle difference in shade is picked up by your eyes because they are just that clever. There are around 6 million cone cells on your retina which are responsible for seeing these colours.