Posted: Jun 02, 2013 3:19 pm
RayClarke wrote:One thing that has puzzled me regarding evolution is eye color and its purpose.
I might be wrong but i don't think there are any species on earth with more different eye color than those of humans.
But WHY what exact evolutionary purpose does eye color serve? Is it a left over from some of our earlier ancestors and if that is the chase what purpose does it serve?
I could imagine that it might serve as a kind of reflector for some of the sun so that our eyes might not get over exposed, but that doesn,´t explain the myriad of colors that our eye has.
So exactly what purpose does our eye color serve?
It may be to do with sexual selection, in humans, at least. The oldest eye colour in humans is probably brown or black (= high melanin content, for good UV protection). Reduced melanin levels were enabled when we migrated away from the sunny, tropical climes, and this probably lead to the various colours we have now. BTW, the eye colour we see is actually a finely-divided pattern of many different colours, in a complex pattern, as illustrated in the image in the Wiki link.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_color