Did you know that eyes actually developed around 550 million years ago? The earliest forms of eyes were just small regions of photoreceptor proteins. Many ancient medics, artists and philosophers had their own mystical and poetic theories on how eyes worked with the idea of photoreception. Plato wrote in the fourth century, BCE, that light emanated from the eye, grabbing objects with its rays. More metaphorically, philosopher Theophrastus, wrote that the eye had “the fire within.”
Fascinating Facts about Your Eyes
Here are some fun facts about eyes you may not know:
- Your eyes start to develop approximately two weeks after you’re conceived.
- You shed eyelashes all the time. In the average lifetime, you would have shed up to 99 feet of eyelashes.
- Eyebrows actually serve a purpose. They are genetically present to protect sweat from your eyes, and eyelashes prevent dirt and dust from entering your eyes.
- Your eyes will never grow in size.
- Only 1/6 of your eyeball is actually showing. A good analogy for this is to think of an iceberg tip with the larger base in underwater.
- Eyes are responsible for approximately 80% of our memories in contrast with ears, touch, and other senses.
- Besides humans, dogs are the only animals that can seek visual cues from another individual’s eyes, and dogs only do this when interacting with humans.
- Some women have a genetic eye mutation which allows them to see up to a million more distinct colors than other humans.
- We spend 10% of our day with our eyes closed, blinking.
- An ostrich’s eye is actually bigger than its brain.
- A goldfish has eyes but no eyelids. Their eyes are always open.
- The game Tetris can actually help cure people with lazy or inconsistent eye muscles.
- Bees have five eyes.
- The space between your eyes and eyebrows is actually referred to as the nasion.
- It is impossible to sneeze with your eyes open.
- Night vision devices typically contain green light because humans can detect more shades of green than any other color.
- The world’s most common eye color is brown.
- Diabetes is the number 1 cause of blindness in the Western World.
- Your eyes have 107 million light-sensitive cells.
- Pirates believed that wearing gold earrings improved their eye sight.
- The term ‘it’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye’ actually derives from Ancient Rome. It was literally the main rule for their wrestling matches: ‘no eye gouging.’
- The cornea is the clear-looking covering on top of the iris and pupil.
- Astigmatism refers to a curvature of the cornea or lens, and toric lenses are prescribed to aid the individual’s vision.
- Your eye color can actually change – though this is rare.
- 20/20 vision seems like perfect vision, but it’s actually a way of describing average, healthy vision.
- Seven million “cones” helps you see color and detail while the 100 million “rods” help you distinguish black and white. So, less than a tenth of your visual receptors actually detect color.
- The eyes blink on an average of 17 times per minute, 14,280 times per day and 5.2 million times a year.
- Right behind the pupil is the lens, which focuses on objects you look at. Take a moment to look around a room and think about the various distances you’re focusing at. Each time, you do this, your eye’s lens instantly changes focus without you even being aware of it. Compare that with a camera’s lens, which takes a few seconds to focus between one distance and the next.
- Diabetes is often first detected during an eye exam. Those who suffer from type 2 diabetes are often symptom-free, meaning they don’t even know that they’ve got it. This type of diabetes is normally picked up during eye exams as it could be seen as small hemorrhages from leaking blood vessels at the back of the eye.
Find Out More Facts With a Professional
Everyone’s eyes are unique and it’s good to ask medical professionals such as the eye specialists at Advanced Eye Medical about interesting facts in regards to your specific prescription and medical eye history. Doing more research to get to know your eyes and vision needs is valuable and the results can turn out to be very interesting. So contact us today.