Blue eyes

Paris Hilton’s eyes are really brown (she wears blue contact lenses). Frank Sinatra was known as Old blue eyes. What is it about blue eyes?

Blue eyes are basically a human trait. Blue-eyed black lemurs are the only non-human primates to have truly blue eyes. There are some cats with blue eyes: Here’s a strange fact: Regardless of breed, white cats with two blue eyes are usually deaf.

Lots of insects have blue eyes: the huge caterpillar of the oleander hawk moth for example. And the one in a million cicada found yesterday by a 6 year old in a Chicago suburb.

Here are the numbers for humans: Around 8% of the world's population has blue eyes, although nearly 90% of Icelanders have blue or green eyes. Thirty-four percent of non-Hispanic whites born in the US between 1936 and 1951 have blue eyes – it was 57% for those born between 1899 and 1905. Like UPS, the US is going brown.

Categorizing people by eye color is tough: Actress Kate Bosworth has one blue eye and one hazel eye. Actress Jane Seymour has one brown eye and one green eye. Contrary to appearances, David Bowie’s eyes have the same color. It’s just that the pupil of one eye is always dilated; making it look like it has a different iris color.

Most Caucasians are born with blue eyes, which may change to green, hazel, or brown as they grow older. Exposure to light after birth triggers the production of melanin in the iris so that by age three the eyes take on their permanent color, assuming no contacts of course.

Here’s some other blue trivia: There are only two animals with blue tongues, the Black Bear and the Chow dog. A robin's egg is blue, but after you put it in vinegar for thirty days it turns yellow. Blueberries are the only non-purple blue fruit or vegetable. I wonder if that’s on Paris’s jailhouse menu.

And can Paris Hilton wear blue contacts in jail? Or is she, too, going brown?