The first, but far from the only, surprise meets mummies and daddies, when a newborn child first opens its eyes. And instead of the amber papa's glitter, everyone sees gray-blue eyes. Is it replaced?
What is the color of the eyes of newborns
Our body is amazing, it is formed in utero and is constantly changing throughout birth. The bones become smaller with age, the thymus (responsible for creating immune cells) disappears by the age of 15, and even the color of the eyes, to which we are accustomed to in adulthood, could be of a different color at birth.
Genetics guarantees the predisposition of the child's eye color depending on the color type of the parents' eyes, but it is impossible to say for sure that your blue-eyed baby will look at the world with bright eyes.
This is due to various factors:
- skin color, the nationality of the parents;
- genetic relationships;
- % of melanin in the body.
Dark-eyed parents with dark eyes cannot have a blue-eyed baby: a dark pigment is dominant in large cases. For light-eyed parents, the process of determining the color of the eyes of a baby is more interesting and little predictable.
Everything depends not only on the parental genes, but also on the ancestors: it is impossible to predict which prevailing gene will fall at the moment of conception, besides, it is unclear how much pigment a small organism can produce on its own to establish the final color of the peephole.
The subtleties of the process of establishing eye color
Why does the newborn's eye color change? The main reason for the instability of the color of the eyes of a newborn is an increase in the body's production of melanos, melanin (translated from Greek is “black”). This substance:
- consists of high-molecular compounds;
- responsible for staining tissues of living organisms;
- To date, not fully understood.
We can reliably speak of a direct correlation between the color of the eyes and melanin. The higher the pigment content in the body, the darker the eyes of the baby will be.
The basis of the iris are textural, pigmentation, tissue and vascular factors of the structure of the eyeball. Melanin stains the thinnest layer on the back of the iris.
The mechanism of its production is activated after birth by special cells - melanocytes. In the first months, the body is formed, adapts to the external environment, accumulates pigment, and a change in the color of the iris is visible to the baby for half a year, although the final color tone is set at 2-3 years.
In what cases the color of the eyes of the newborn does not change
In some cases, you can accurately predict the color of the eyes of the newborn.
- If both parents are brown-eyed and the child has dark eyes at birth, then they will remain so for life.
Danish scientists conducted a large-scale study and came to the conclusion that initially all the inhabitants of the earth had brown eyes.
- When the parents fixate at the gene level the mechanism of disabling the formation of melanin, the baby inherits the "bright" eye factor, which cannot change with age.
In the course of evolution in human genetics, a certain mechanism appeared that "turned off" the gene that produces melatonin. Reduction of pigment affects the appearance of the whole organism, including the eyes. So gradually people with bluish, gray-green eyes began to appear.
Another option when the child’s eye color is stable from birth is albinism. This is a severe form of gene mutations associated with the inability to produce pigment, and then the eyes of the children from birth are very bright.
Genetic and anatomical and physiological features of eye color
In the XIX century, G. Mendel laid the foundation for genetics, defining the dominant and recessive genes of heredity. Dominant always dominates, recessive - inferior, with the possibility of becoming paramount in future generations. This also applies to eye color.
The dark color of the iris will prevail over the light ones, but there is always a small chance that the gray eyes of the grandmother will manifest themselves in a few generations. These are simple rules, but genetics have established that 6 genes are involved at different sites for the formation of eye color and even combinations of the same color can go up to a thousand.
The eyes are multi-colored, it is associated with a thin iris, containing clumps of dark pigment - the one that affects skin color and tan. If the pigment in the shell is small, the eyes are light, if many are almost black.
Most of the newborns have blue eyes, because they have not had time to accumulate pigments of pigment in their irises, this requires at least six months.
Color transformations in newborns
Parents are looking forward to the baby first opened his eyes. But expectations can not be justified, and moms and dads are at a loss: from whom did the child inherit the uncharacteristic color gamut? Everything is simple here.
How does eye color change in newborns?
There is a pattern: if the eyes are light blue and the parents are also light-eyed, there will be no radical transformations.
But the eyes of gray shade waiting for transformation. In six months, a child with amber, brown or black eyes may look at you. Genetics is an unpredictable science.
How long to wait to see true eye color
Despite the fact that starting from the 77th day of intrauterine development, the iris forms in the fetus, it’s too early to talk about the constant color of the baby’s eyes in the first months of life. All systems of the body are restarted during birth, they learn to work in new modes: beneficial bacteria are colonized in the stomach, melatonin, the pigment responsible for eye color, is intensively produced in cells.
When a child is born, it’s often clear eyes, and for many parents it becomes a surprise that the eye color of their little miracle is different from that of their mother and father. You should not worry about it, as there is a certain period when the eye color of a newborn baby changes.
By six months, you will see dramatic changes in the color of the eyes, if there are hereditary factors. But to say that the child's father's gray or mom's green eyes can only be a couple of years later. It is then that melanin finally forms the iris and maintains color throughout life.
What color of eyes will the child have? Table
Using the table, suppose what eyes the child will have, not forgetting that each color has several nuances. Brown - not only brown, honey, amber, onyx; Blue is indigo or brilliant blue, and among gray there are silver or tin.
| Parent-1 | Parent 2 | Baby's eye color | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hazel (%) | Green (%) | Blue (%) | ||
| brown | brown | 75 | 18 | 6 |
| green | brown | 50 | 37 | 13 |
| blue | brown | 50 | 0 | 50 |
| green | green | less than 1% | 75 | 25 |
| green | blue | 0 | 50 | 50 |
| blue | blue | 0 | 1 | 99 |
Despite scientific knowledge and genetics, it is worth remembering: for all the rules and laws, life always presents surprising exceptions.
And some more interesting information can be found in the following video.
