If you have amber eyes, you’re a member of a small global family with one of humankind’s rarest eye colors (green eyes are considered the other most rare).
Only an estimated 5% of people have an amber eye color. However, it is more common in the animal kingdom: A number of animals commonly have amber-colored eyes, including wolves, dogs, cats, eagles, owls, pigeons and fish. In fact, eyes with this color are sometimes referred to as “wolf eyes.”
What is amber eye color?
Rare amber eyes are yellow-brown, often described as having a golden or copper hue.
To understand the amber eye color, it may help to understand how eye color is determined in the first place. We’ll go into this a little more later, but here’s a preview to explain how eyes can appear amber:
The colored part of the eye is known as the iris. Melanin pigments contribute to the front layer of the iris, just as they contribute to skin and hair color. Melanin comes in two forms: eumelanin and pheomelanin. Eumelanin is brownish-black, while pheomelanin is reddish-yellow.
Amber borrows some of its color from eumelanin and some of the color from pheomelanin (also called lipochrome). It’s thought that amber eyes contain a high level of pheomelanin.
Amber is one of six eye colors. The others are blue, brown, gray, green and hazel. Amber eye color can occur in a spectrum of shades, from very dark amber to light amber eyes.
While there are only six eye colors, no two people have eyes that are precisely the same color… as with amber, all eye colors come in a vast spectrum of shades and blends.
Who has amber eyes?
People with amber-colored eyes often have Asian, Spanish, South American or South African roots, as do people with brown eyes. People with blue, gray, green and hazel eyes are of European ancestry.
Which celebrities have amber-colored eyes?
As such a striking eye color, it’s not surprising that there are a number of well-known individuals with amber eyes, including:
- Justin Bieber
- Jennifer Lopez
- Jennifer Garner
- Nicole Richie
- Darren Criss
- Eliza Dushku
Are amber eyes the same as hazel eyes?
Amber eyes are not the same as hazel eyes. The amber eye color is a mostly solid color, while hazel eyes have shades of brown and green.
How is eye color determined?
More than 60 genes help determine whether your eyes will be amber or any of the other six eye colors, with two of those genes playing a primary role.
Most of the genes connected to eye color have a role in producing, transporting or storing melanin. People with brown eyes have a large amount of melanin in the iris, while people with blue eyes have much less of this pigment.
READ MORE: What is the rarest eye color?
