Why do people say blue eyes are rare? Purple eyes are rare!?

Question

Elizabeth Taylor is the ONLY person IN THE WORLD to have purple eyes. THERE ARE SO MANY BLUE EYES THAT IT'S NOT EVEN RARE! EVEN GREEN EYES ARE MORE RARE!

http://www.diamond-legend.info/people/taylor.html

HERE'S A PICTURE!

HERE"S ANOTHER!

http://www.cosmomovieawards.com/actors/images/elizabethtaylor.jpg

Answer 1

I have grey eyes - thats even more rare than blue. . .but how do you know she's the only person? i mean. . .maybe some poor kid in sweden has purple eyes and we just dont know it because he/she isn't famous?

Answer 2

It depends upon where you are on the planet. In Iceland, many people have blue eyes, in India few have blue eyes. So blue eyes could be 30% in one area and 1/4% in other gene pools. We know that the inheritance of eye color is polygenic (many genes) and it depends on how many active (additive) alleles (versions) you inherit. Note, that blue eyes are really an absence of color, similar to the way water appears blue by reflection but is really colorless. So people with blue eyes have not inherited any or very few active alleles. The more active alleles that are inherited the darker the color of the eyes. Let us say that mom has medium brown eyes and dad also has medium brown eyes, but each of them have 3 active alleles and 3 non active alleles. So their first child inherits all 6 of their active alleles and has dark brown eyes. Then it could be that child number 2 inherits all 6 non-active alleles. That child will have very light blue eyes. Green, hazel, gray, light brown, etc. are all as a result of how many alleles are adding to the eye color. This is also why brown is always dominant over blue and green is dominant over blue because they both have more active alleles than blue and add to the eye color. Hope this helps. For rare, some people have two different colors ... heterochromia iridium ... we see also cats with this condition.

Answer 3

You need to do a bit more research. For one thing, Elizabeth Taylor isn't the only person in the world to have purple eyes. Also, blue eyes aren't considered rare really. It's just that the gene for darker eyes is usually dominant over the one for blue eyes thus producing more dark-eyed children. Blue eyes are still less common than brown or green ones however.

Answer 4

Ive seen a couple of people with purple eyes. Of course I live in a place that is FREEZING and DARK more than half the time. Hair skin and eye color are adaptations to the environment.

Think about it if you started at the equator and started walking north, you'd see the general populations hair, skin, and eyes get progressively lighter.
Less pigmentation in the skin lets in more sunlight, which is why pale people like me are at high risk for skin cancer when we live in the desert and dark people are at higher risk for vitamin d deficiency (a vitamin we get mostly from sunlight) when they live in the north.

BTW eye skin and hair colors are not "dominant" or "recessive". This is a historic misconception. Now that we've mapped the human genome we know its not true. They are what you call a multiple allele gene (dependent on many factors) My eyes are green. My husbands are brown. My sons are green. My theory ...ITS COLD.
My grandmothers eyes were brown, her husbands blue, my mothers green....anyways you see where im going with this

Answer 5

i know, for real! i mean, now, lots of people have blue eyes! and Elizaabeth Taylor is the only person I know who has purple eyes. and those people who have green/brown/blue eyes, now thats pretty rare right there! or maybe not...

Answer 6

Blue eyes are relatively common throughout Europe and other countries with populations of European descent, such as Canada, the United States, and Australia. Throughout the rest of the world they are relatively rare. Approximately 8% of the worlds population have blue eyes.

Answer 7

My eyes change between blue and green so what does that make them on terms of rare? But if you look around you will notice that an awful lot of people have brown eyes- I don't see a whole lot of other colors.

Answer 8

Whats your point? Its called Mendels Genetics. Have you heard of it? It tells you that blue/green/purple eyes are rare because the trait is recessive to dominant genes like brown eyes. Purple is extremely rare, so rare that it doesnt really count.

thats like saying White people are white, but Albinos are whiter. yeah we know but thats obvious.

Answer 9

Blue eyes are a recessive gene. Like blondes, blue eyes are going extinct, they will be blotted out by brown eyes.
And the only way purples eyes could exist is that the mother and father were either red and blue, red being a rare one, and even rarer that both genes showed up as well as they did.
Green eyes wouldn't be as rare, as it's just a lighter version of brown, since brown is taking over the population.
I have green eyes, but most of it is brown, it's what you would call hazel, a 2tone kind of thing.

Answer 10

Blue eyes are rare compared to brown eyes. almost every race except the white race has brown eyes. I don't know where you live but when I get on the bus I'm the only person with blue eyes.

Answer 11

I have naturally blonde hair and brown eyes. It's pretty rare. IMO the most beautiful eyes are hazel-green with any color hair. Black hair w/blue eyes are also captivating. I like how people look different.