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The cooperative eye hypothesis suggests that the pale sclera evolved as a method of nonverbal communication that makes it easier for one individual to identify where another individual is looking. Other mammals with white or pale sclera include chimpanzees , many orangutans , some gorillas , and bonobos .
The eyes sit in bony cavities called the orbits, in the skull. There are six extraocular muscles that control eye movements. The front visible part of the eye is made up of the whitish sclera, a coloured iris, and the pupil. A thin layer called the conjunctiva sits on top of this. The front part is also called the anterior segment of the eye.
An organism's "eye color" is actually the color of one's iris, the cornea being transparent and the white sclera entirely outside the area of interest. Melanin is yellowish to dark hazel in the stromal pigment cells, and black in the iris pigment epithelium , which lies in a thin but very opaque layer across the back of the iris.
Diagram of a human eye; note that not all eyes have the same anatomy as a human eye. The mammalian eye can also be divided into two main segments: the anterior segment and the posterior segment. [10] The human eye is not a plain sphere but is like two spheres combined, a smaller, more sharply curved one and a larger lesser curved sphere.
Eye color is an inherited trait determined by multiple genes. [14] [15] These genes are sought by studying small changes in the genes themselves and in neighboring genes, called single-nucleotide polymorphisms or SNPs. The total number of genes that contribute to eye color is unknown, but there are a few likely candidates.
The uvea (/ ˈ j uː v i ə /; [1] derived from Latin: uva meaning "grape"), also called the uveal layer, uveal coat, uveal tract, vascular tunic or vascular layer, is the pigmented middle layer of the three concentric layers that make up an eye, precisely between the inner retina and the outer fibrous layer composed of the sclera and cornea.
The eye is essentially a derivative of the ectoderm from the somatic ectoderm and neural tube, with a succession of inductions by the chordamesoderm. Chordamesoderm induces the anterior portion of the neural tube to form the precursors of the synapomorphic tripartite brain of vertebrates, and it will form a bulge called the diencephalon.
The human eye, showing the iris and pupil. In 1802, philosopher William Paley called it a miracle of "design."In 1859, Charles Darwin himself wrote in his Origin of Species, that the evolution of the eye by natural selection seemed at first glance "absurd in the highest possible degree". [3]