The rarest eye color is green. There are many ways to feel special. Maybe you’re a stellar athlete. Maybe you excel at your job. Or maybe you have a unique physical trait like a rare eye color.
Ever wondered if the latter is the case. There are four main eye colors in the human population. These are brown, blue, hazel, and green. Which one is the rarest of them all?
What is the rarest eye color? The rarest eye color is green, according to the American Academy of Ophthalmology. Only two percent of the global population has green eyes.
Green is also the rarest eye color in America. A survey by the academy found that 45 percent of Americans had brown eyes, 27 percent had blue eyes. Eighteen percent had hazel eyes and nine percent had green eyes. A survey also found that 1 percent had eyes that were a color not listed.
Why are green eyes so rare?
To understand why some colors are rarer than others, it’s helpful to know what causes eye color in the first place. Every iris contains a pigment called melanin, but the amount of melanin varies from person to person. No person has the exact same amount of melanin in their irises.
The amount of melanin in your iris determines your eye color. It’s all about the internal reflection of light proportional to the amount of melanin. It’s not really that the iris is-green. It’s actually that the amount of melanin that the iris has is reflecting a color and it happens to be green in color.
Your eye color is unique to you. No two people in the world have the same color eyes. You are special!
Sheila Birnbaum’s professional career has been devoted to enhancing patient care. As the Director of the Patient Advocacy Program at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital (RWJUH), Hamilton, NJ, she instituted numerous programs, many which received statewide recognition, including several prestigious rewards.
