Learn how green eyes are inherited through genes, why eye color varies, and how the combination of parents' genes affects an 11-year-old's eye color.
Genes are like tiny instructions inside our bodies that decide how we look, including our eye color. We get genes from our parents—half from our mom and half from our dad.
Eye color depends mainly on a pigment called melanin, which gives color to our eyes. Darker eyes have more melanin, and lighter eyes, like green or blue, have less.
Green eyes are rare and happen when a person has a small amount of melanin combined with other color factors. This mix makes the eyes look green.
Each parent has genes for eye color, which can be for brown, blue, green, or other colors. Since brown is a strong color gene, if one parent has brown eyes, it’s more likely the child will too, but not always.
If both parents carry the gene for green eyes, even if they have brown eyes, their child might have green eyes. This is because the child can inherit the green gene from both parents.
So, green eyes are a cool mix of genes and pigment working together!