Baby Eye Color Predictor: What Color Eyes Might Your Baby Have

Most parents are curious to know how their baby will look after birth. While technologies such as ultrasound scans help understand the facial contours of children before they are born, a baby eye color predictor reveals the color of their eyes.

A baby eye color predictor may require you to fill in some details about your and your partner’s eye colors, and it may make the prediction based on this information. Many online apps allow you to find this interesting fact about your baby.

Read this post to learn about what determines the color of a baby’s eyes and how to choose the right app to know this.

How Does Baby Eye Color Predictor Work?

There are several eye color predictors and calculators available on the internet. The calculator may be in the form of a graphical presentation or may have a quiz to get the required information.

• These apps take into account factors like color of your eyes and that of your partner. Some of them may also consider the eye color of grandparents on both sides.
• While some calculators offer only solid colors as options, others let you adjust the shade on a color bar.
• By making proper computations, they reveal the eye color that your baby is most likely to have.

What Determines Baby’s Eye Color?

The color of your baby’s eyes depends on genetic factors, as well as presence of a certain pigment called melanin (1). Eye color can be heterogeneous or homogeneous, meaning that there can be one uniform shade or a mix of colors in the eyes.

• There is a dominant gene (mostly brown) and two repressive genes (green and blue) (2).
• The interplay of these genes determines the eyeshade that your baby will have.
• The melanin, whose level is determined by the oculocutaneous albinism II (OCA2) gene, is present in the iris and is inactive at birth (2).
• It gets activated when it comes in contact with light and then the process of darkening of color starts.
• It is often observed that babies with fair skin have blue or gray eyes.
• Likewise, babies with dark skin have dark brown eyes.

Changing Color Of Eyes:

Eye color of babies is a polygenic trait, meaning that the eye color of parents plays the most important role. Interestingly, the color of eyes does not remain the same as at birth (3).

• During birth, the color of eyes is light, since new born babies do not have active melanin which darkens the cells.
• Once your baby is 6 months old, the change in their eye color starts to decelerate (3).
• Genetic variations play a key role in determining the eye color (2).
• By the time babies are nine months old, they have a definite eye color, that usually does not change further (4).
• Caucasian babies may have blue eyes (5). The color changes as they grow.

Eye Color Based On Ethnicity:

The color of eyes, as in the color of skin, differs widely between people of various ethnic origins (6). Here are some shades and the regions they are found in:

• Dark Brown/ Black:

It is most common in East and Southeast Asia, as well as Africa.

• Light Brown:

Such eyes can be found in south and west Asia, as well as Southern Europe.

• Green/ Blue:

For people in America and some parts of Europe, these are the most common shades.

• Hazel/ Grey:

People belonging to West Asia and America sometimes have these eye colors.

Eye colors that are less common are green and amber. People with such eyes have a slight hint of the pigment lipochrome in the iris. Hence, it is easy to predict the eye color for babies belonging to Asian races, while it is tough for children with American parents.

Waardenburg syndrome

There are cases when babies are born with one eye as brown and another eye as blue. It is because of a medical condition called Waardenburg syndrome (7). This condition results in changes of the eye color. However, this is a rare genetic disorder. In such cases, it is essential that you consult an ophthalmologist.

Studies are going on to find accurate reasons behind the changes in eye color of a newborn.

Choosing The Right Calculator App:

A number of websites have eye color detector or calculators and it is completely your choice as to which one you want to use. You can do an online search and the ones that come up in the top three are usually the most popular. Most of the predictors come out with the same results if the information entered is consistent.

References

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