Only 2% of People Have This World’s Rarest Eye Color

Did you realize that no two people in the world have the same exact eye color?

Even people with the same eye color, such as blue, will have subtle differences due to gene variations, making each person's eye color as unique as their fingerprints.

Your eye color is actually an expression of multiple genes, with over 60 genes contributing to the final result.

Despite what you may have always thought, your eye color doesn't result in a mix of your parents' colors. Many genes are at play from each parent, so how you end up with your eye color is really left up to chance.

This is the World's Rarest Eye Color

According to the American Academy of Ophthalmology, green eyes are the rarest, with only about 2% of the world’s population having them.

Your eye color depends on the amount and distribution of a brown pigment called melanin in your iris, the colored part of your eye.

Green eyes are not due only to the amount of melanin in the eye, but also to how the light scatters off the eye. The optical effect of light scattering off the melanin in these eyes makes them green.

What is the World's Most Common Color?

As Van Morrison sang, "Standing in the sunlight laughing, hiding 'hind a rainbow's wall, slipping and sliding, all along the waterfall with you, my brown-eyed girl, you, my brown-eyed girl."

Brown eyes are most common, and it's not even close.

The AAO reports that as many as 79% of people worldwide have some variation of brown eyes, and in the U.S., 45% of the population has brown eyes.

It’s an inherited trait that dates back about 10,000 years when every person on earth had brown eyes, says the AAO.

Other Common and Rare Eye Colors

Blue eyes are the next most popular eye color. It's estimated that 27% of Americans have some shade of blue eyes.

The second-rarest eye color is hazel, a mixture of brown and green with golden flecks. About 18% of Americans have hazel eyes.