The human body is miraculous, and few parts are as incredible as our eyes! From gathering critical safety information to painting the most beautiful pictures, our eyes have many important functions, but they can often go unappreciated. It’s with this in mind that we’re sharing 10 interesting facts about your eyes to make you even more thankful for them!

Your Eyes Are the Second Most Complex Organ In Your Body.

After the brain, our eyes are the most complex organ in our bodies. This makes sense when you realize that there are over 1 million nerves connecting each eye to the brain, but the human eye weighs just under an ounce. With all these tools to aid vision and perception, your eyes are working tirelessly.

Your Eyes Intake 36,000 Pieces of Info Per Hour.

You may have heard the saying, “The eyes are the windows to the world.” That’s because humans gather nearly 80% of information visually. In fact, your eyes detect over 36,000 pieces of information every hour! This information can span the gambit from reading fine print up close to detecting a candle flame that’s 14 miles away in pitch black. Either way, your eyes must have strength and endurance to sustain this level of daily work.

Your Eyes Never Stop Working.

On the heels of the previous facts, we thought it was important that even when you sleep, your eyes are working. They do stop communicating with your brain, but they continue seeing light, hence why a bright light can wake you up. Additionally, your eyes don’t need to be “woken up” or trained to see near or far distances or the millions of colors we can pick up. They’re born knowing what to do and are prepared to do it day in and day out, changing focus more than 50 times per second!

Your Iris Has More than 256 Characteristics Unique to You.

Your irises are even more unique than your fingerprints! With nearly 2000 genes attributing to these characteristics, including color, pattern, banding, and even eye dominance, your eye is one of your most unique features!

Your Eyes Have Blind Spots, But You Don’t Notice.

You may have read that headline and thought, “No way! I have great vision!” Both can be true! This is because the connection where your optic nerve meets your eye creates a hole in your vision. However, because both of your eyes work together to “fill in the gap,” this blind spot goes completely unnoticed.

Your Eyes Can’t Feel Pain.

Yes, you read that right! Your eyeballs cannot feel pain because there are NO pain nerves inside the eye. This helps make ocular surgeries like LASIK possible, but it also means that subtle changes in the eye can go undetected. That said, your eyelids have lots of nerves, so they experience many different feelings and often create faux feelings of pain in lieu of your eyes feeling it.

Your Eyes Are Fast.

Your eyes are the fastest contracting muscle in the body, taking less than 10 milliseconds! Your eyes can also heal extremely quickly. It typically takes just 2 days to heal a minor corneal scratch vs. 1-2 weeks for a small cut or scratch on the skin.

Your Eyes Can Breathe.

Okay, so it’s not technically breathing, but your eyes are able to receive oxygen directly from the air through the cornea, a part of the ocular surface. It’s the only part of the body that does not receive its oxygen from the lungs. The cornea is the only tissue in the body that does not have blood vessels, so it must rely on diffusion of oxygen from the atmosphere through the tear film.

Photography “Red Eye” Is…

Just in time for the holidays, we learned why sometimes your eyes glow in pictures. Unlike the cornea which lacks blood vessels, the retina is densely packed with blood vessels. These blood vessels reflect the light of the flash, causing the “red eye” effect seen in photography.

There Is Such Thing as the Perfect Amount of Eye Contact.

Another fact shared just in time for the holidays! If you’re worried about meeting a significant other’s family for the first time, we’ve learned that there’s a science-backed length of time to make eye contact when meeting someone new. The contact should be just long enough to notice eye color, under 4 seconds. The research demonstrates that this timing is enough to establish a connection without causing discomfort.

As we approach Thanksgiving, we can’t help but feel grateful for everything our eyes do for us! We hope you enjoy this holiday season and consider protecting your eyes for the future with clinically proven EyePromise® eye vitamins. Learn more.