Ask the Optician All Kinds of Things You've Always Wondered About Eyes (and a few things you've probably never even thought about)

*Our eyes are always the same size from birth, but our nose and ears never stop growing.
*Seeing requires about half of the brain to get involved.
*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.
*You blink about 12 times every minute. (That’s 4,200,000 times a year!)
*Our eyelashes have an average life span of 5 months.
*The average blink lasts for about 1/10th of a second.
*It’s impossible to sneeze with your eyes open.
*The reason why your nose gets runny when you are crying is because the tears from the eyes drain into the nose.
*The black part on the front of our eye is called the “pupil.” It is really a little hole that opens into the back part of our eyes.
*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.
*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.
*Blind people can see their dreams as long as they weren’t born blind.

*The shark cornea has been used in eye surgery, since its cornea is similar to a human cornea.
*Sailors once thought that wearing a gold earring would improve their eyesight.
*An ant has two eyes, each one contains lots of smaller eyes. This is called a ‘compound eye’.
*A worm doesn’t have any eyes.
*Dogs can’t see the difference between the colors red and green.
*A chameleon’s eyes can look in different directions - at the same time!
*The placement of a donkey’s eyes in its heads enables it to see all four feet at all times.

*The largest eyeball on the planet is 18 inches wide, about the size of a large watermelon and it belongs to The Giant Squid.

Feel free to pass along any of these fun and interesting facts at your next gathering. I’m sure you’ll enjoy an interesting conversation with your family or friends!

Please submit any questions you’d like addressed to VillageOpticians@hotmail.com

Sorces: hightechscience.org, funshun.com & AllAboutVision.com