Eye Facts

When you look at someone you love, your pupils dilate. Surprisingly, they also dilate when you look at someone you hate — both emotions trigger the same arousal response.

Studies show that men tend to have slightly better visual acuity than women, while women generally have more sensitive hearing, particularly at higher frequencies.

The octopus does not have a blind spot.

The average computer user blinks 7 times a minute, less than half the normal rate of 20.

The human eye blinks an average of 4,200,000 times a year.

Many hamsters only blink one eye at a time.

It is very difficult to sneeze with your eyes open due to an involuntary reflex. The eye-closing is controlled by the same cranial nerve that triggers sneezing, creating an automatic protective response, though it's not actually to protect eyes from bacteria.

The pupil of the eye expands as much as 45 percent when a person looks at something pleasing.

Blue eyes are the most sensitive to light, dark brown the least sensitive.

The average person blinks between 5 and 7 million times a year—that's once every few seconds throughout your waking hours!

Optical illusions occur when what the eyes see conflicts with what the brain expects.

While newborns have tear glands from birth, they typically do not produce visible crying tears until they are approximately two weeks to three months old.

It is possible to go blind from smoking too heavily.

Sectoral heterochromia is an eye condition where one part of the iris appears different to the rest. It's generally a result of excessive pigment.

Frogs cannot swallow without blinking.

Only about 2% of the world population has green eyes.

If the human eye were a digital camera, it would have approximately 576 megapixels—though our eyes work so differently from cameras that any comparison is a rough estimate.

Honeybees have a type of hair on their eyes!

The focusing muscles of the eyes move around 100,000 times a day. To give your leg muscles the same workout, you would need to walk 80km (50 miles) every day.

Those things you see floating in your eyes when you stare into space are called Mouches Volantes, French for 'flying flies,' though they're more commonly known as floaters.

IMDb is one of the oldest websites on the internet, and began on Usenet in 1990 as a list of "actresses with beautiful eyes".

The colossal squid has the largest eyes in the world.