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Study Suggests People With Blue Eyes Can Read Better in Dim Lighting
The study supports my long-held theory that people with light-colored eyes can see better in darker conditions.
In 2008, researchers at the University of Copenhagen, in Denmark, found that blue eye color is due to a genetic mutation that occurred between 6,000 and 10,000 years ago and is responsible for all blue-eyed humans. Then, in 2023, researchers from the University of Copenhagen and the University of Norway discovered the genetic mutation came from a single individual — meaning all blue-eyed people have the same ancestor.
But why this mutation occurred and how it has remained to modern days has yet to be settled. Some say that since our bodies transform the sun’s ultraviolet light into vitamin D, blue eyes make sense with lighter skin tones and blonde hair, which are all due to lower melatonin levels. Meanwhile, others think blue-eyed people had more children because the trait was viewed as attractive.
All these theories make sense, but I’ve had one for a while now that lighter eye colors can see better in darker conditions than darker eye colors. Now, Kyoko Yamaguchi, who studies the genetic basis of skin, hair, and eye color at Liverpool John Moores University in the UK, discovered people with blue eyes can read better in dimmer conditions than people with brown eyes.
Yamaguchi’s Curiosity
After moving to Europe from Japan, Yamaguchi told New Scientist she was surprised by how dim the lighting in European buildings was. The lighting was so faint that she often found it too dark to read. This observation made her curious whether there might be a biological reason related to the weaker lighting rather than it being just a cultural preference.
The Study
Following her curiosity, Yamaguchi and her student, Faith Erin Cain, tested the vision of 40 people of European descent with blue or brown eyes. The preprint of their small study was published in bioRxiv, the preprint server for biology, on January 20, 2024.
For the experiment, the 40 participants were asked to stand in a room and face a wall that was 9.8 feet (3 meters) away, with a…
