15 Facts You Probably Didn't Know About Your Eyes

You’ve had your peepers since you were born, so you may think you know them pretty well, but here are some fun facts you may not know about eyes.

1. The average blink lasts for about 1/10th of a second.
2. While it takes some time for most parts of your body to warm up to their full potential, your eyes are on their “A game” 24/7.
3. Eyes heal quickly. With proper care, it only takes about 48 hours for the eye to repair a corneal scratch.
4. Seeing is such a big part of everyday life that it requires about half of the brain to get involved.
5. Newborns don’t produce tears. They make crying sounds, but the tears don’t start flowing until they are about 4-13 weeks old.
6. Around the world, about 39 million people are blind and roughly 6 times that many have some kind of vision impairment.
7. Doctors have yet to find a way to transplant an eyeball. The optic nerve that connects the eye to the brain is too sensitive to reconstruct successfully.
8. The cells in your eye come in different shapes. Rod-shaped cells allow you to see shapes, and cone-shaped cells allow you to see color.
9. You blink about 12 times every minute.
10. Your eyes are about 1 inch across and weigh about 0.25 ounce.
11. Some people are born with two differently colored eyes. This condition is heterochromia.
12. Even if no one in the past few generations of your family had blue or green eyes, these recessive traits can still appear in later generations.
13. Each of your eyes has a small blind spot in the back of the retina where the optic nerve attaches. You don’t notice the hole in your vision because your eyes work together to fill in each other’s blind spot.
14. Out of all the muscles in your body, the muscles that control your eyes are the most active.
15. 80% of vision problems worldwide are avoidable or even curable.

Who knew your eyes could be so amazing and complex?