How to Calculate the Probability of a Baby's Eye Color

Researchers have studied eye color for more than a century, and throughout most of that time, they believed eye color followed simple Mendelian genetic rules. Brown eyes were dominant, blue eyes recessive, and thus if both parents had blue eyes, their children's eye color would inevitably match the parents'. But scientists have come to realize that eye color is a polygenic trait, which means more than one gene influences it. While it is possible to estimate the probability of a baby having a particular eye color, enough factors influence this trait that the precise shade of eyes a baby will have is one mystery that won't be solved until after a baby's birth.

Instructions

    • 1

      Determine the eye color of yourself, your mate and both of your sets of parents. While a baby will not necessarily have the same color of eyes as his parents or grandparents, their genes provide the most direct influence on his eye color.

    • 2

      Find out the eye colors of you and your mate's siblings. Sibling eye colors provide clues about possible recessive genes carried in your family trees. Brown-eyed parents with green- or blue-eyed siblings may carry genes for the lighter eye colors that their children could inherit.

    • 3

      Identify whether you or your mate comes from a population where the genes for a particular eye color are more common. In most human populations brown eyes are the norm. Children with African or Asian ancestry, for instance, will most likely have brown eyes. Eye colors other than brown only appear frequently in white populations, and in those populations may even be the most common colors. A 2004 study in "Preventative Medicine" found that 89 percent of Icelandic women and 87 percent of Icelandic men had either blue or green eyes.

    • 4

      Plug your family's eye colors into an online baby eye calculator, like the one at the Tech Museum. This calculator provides an oversimplified model for predicting a baby's eye color since it assumes only three eye colors exist, only two genes influence eye color and everyone using the calculator shares an equal likelihood of producing children with brown, blue or green eyes. Despite these drawbacks, the calculator can provide a rough idea of how likely your baby is to have a particular eye color.

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