Posted on 10/23/2006 9:03:42 AM PDT by Pharmboy
Blue-eyed men prefer blue-eyed women, apparently because eye color can help reveal whether their partner has been faithful, researchers said on Monday.
"Before you request a paternity test, spend a few minutes looking at your child's eye color," Bruno Laeng and colleagues at the University of Tromso in Norway said in the study.
Under the laws of genetics, two parents with blue eyes will always have blue-eyed children, it said. So a blue-eyed man can know his blue-eyed wife or partner has cheated on him if their child has brown eyes.
"Blue-eyed men may have unconsciously learned to value a physical trait that can facilitate recognition of own kin," the scientists said in the journal Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology.
The scientists asked 88 students to rate the attractiveness of models based on pictures manipulated so that half of them had blue eyes and the other half had brown eyes. The blue-eyed men in the group showed a preference for blue-eyed women.
But brown-eyed men, who cannot find any clues about paternity from a child's eye color, had no preferences by eye color. Women showed no preference for brown- or blue-eyed men, irrespective of their own eye color.
A quarter of children born to two brown-eyed parents who have both brown and blue-eye genes among their ancestors will have blue eyes. The rest will be brown.
In a second study, 443 young adults of both sexes were asked about the eye color of their partners -- blue-eyed men were also the group with the highest proportion of partners with the same eye color.
"Blue eyed parents have about a 25 percent chance of having a brown-eyed baby."
No, they don't. If both parents have true blue eyes (NOT hazel), their child's eyes will be blue, barring a rare freak mutation.
I'm attracted to blue-eyed, blond-haired women and I always thought it was because that's what I am. Albeit, my 2nd wife was red-haired with green eyes.
The magic of HTML. LOL. I'm guessing the rainbow fonts were quite indicative of the personality.
Blue eyes will occur only if all four alleles are for blue eyes.
It's hardly breaking science.
Your brother-in-law needs to talk to Brother Mendel.
Maybe if I preferred white women....
The pigment is there for a reason --- presumably UV protection --- I would watch out for cataracts and/or other eye damage.
Wear GOOD UV glasses 24/7.
I pay lots of attention to the eyes. For they are the windows of the soul. Original, ain't it.
But really, I go totally gaga over a great pair of eyes.
Okay, that makes sense. :-)
If we were talking, say, Siamese cats (which I bred and showed for 15 years or so), I would agree with you. But we've had rigorous selective breeding of those cats for over a hundred years, and they reproduce much faster than humans. Even then, we're talking about several distinct recessive traits and factors, and the breeding square is complicated.
Human genetics is messier. There is more than one simple recessive gene at work here, and these flat-out statements just won't wash, especially in a population as diverse as the U.S.
I imagine the Norwegian gene pool is a little smaller and has more "true blue" eyes (although that's probably changed with the influx of Muslim immigrants.) I still wouldn't bet a marriage on it.
I wouldn't bet a marriage, either -- but a DNA test might be in order.
That said, the only way a brown-eyed child is possible is a parent is really a Hazel that is "passing" for blue.
Even with "black sheep" with green eyes, it would not explain two people with genetically blue eyes having children with eyes that are a color other than blue. I know people with "vivid blue eyes" that, when the light hits them in a certain way, they look a bit greenish, and I assume that they are not the result of two recessive genes. I'm no geneticist, but I would guess that pale blue eyes are not true double-recessive blue eyes and thus could result in a brown-eyed gene being passed down.
BTW, people whose eyes are neither true blue nor true brown---be they green or pale blue or hazel or gray or caramel---most likely have one blue-eyed gene and one brown-eyed gene and have a very, very common "mutation" that produces not brown eyes (as one would expect with one brown and one blue gene) but another color.
Even with all Siamese cats' eyes being nominally blue, and the thousands of generations we've had to fix the eye color, we still have to watch out for and breed out "funny" eye colors . . . I've seen cats with a pale washed out bluish gray eye color, and others so dark as to be almost indigo. The "ideal" under the standard is "deep vivid blue" for all coat colors, but it still varies. Generally, it appears that the gene for the dilute coat color also affects the eye color and washes it out to some extent, so that your Blue Point Siamese, for example, will have a darker blue eye than the Lilac Points. All the Blues have lighter eyes than the Seals, too, so I'm pretty sure that coat color has an effect.
All the photos have been pulled, so we'll have to use our imaginations.
That's so 90's
Yes, brown is dominant.
My husband has brown eyes and his dad has blue eyes. My husband's sperm carries both blue eyed and brown eyed genes. I have blue eyes.
My daughters have blue eyes, but their eggs can also carry the brown eyed gene because of their dad.
If they marry someone with blue eyes, their children can still have brown eyes because it takes both sets of genes to make blue eyes.
In my brother's case, we have both blue-eyed and brown-eyed ancestors. Our parents are both blue-eyed, but I know that at least one of my grandparents had brown eyes.
My brothers eyes are not as dark brown as my husband and my son. Maybe they would be considered hazel, but we always said he had brown eyes.
There was no infedelity either. My brother looks just like my dad accept for his eyes (and he looks like me), and he was definitely carried by my mom.
My mother always lamented that she would most likely be genetically 'doomed' to having only blue eyed children. She comes from a family of dark complected, dark or black haired, and dark brown or brown/green eyed people. My dad parents were one blue eyed, the other deep brown. She stood out, uncomfortably so to her, because of her very blue eyes and contrasting very dark hair. With a blue eyed husband, she knew brown eyes would be unlikely. Two siblings have blue eyes, mine are a deep green and my other sister's are deep gray with gold flecks. In addition, mine were just as blue as my blue eyed siblings when I was born but 'turned' into green by the time I was in the 5th grade, as photos show. I am the only one 'dark' one, too.
Oh, shoot, 2 out of 3! I'm a brunette! ;-)
It was a joke. CGEB was a transvestite Freeper.
Brunettes are A-OK by me. Next best thing to a red head. ;o)
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