Fun Facts About Eyes

Your eyes themselves are not what actually allows you to see. Your eyes are actually the vessel in which messages between the brain and optic nerve communicate. There are a lot of fun facts about eyes that we want to talk about today. Next time you search for “pharmacy near me” on Google, think of us first.

Let’s get right into them.

You Can’t Sneeze With Your Eyes Open

A lot of us have tried this at one time or another. I haven’t because I still have a small fear that my eyes are going to fly out of my head. But for the brave ones who have tried this, they have discovered that it can’t be done.

The Only Organ More Complex Than The Eye Is The Brain

There are a lot of organs in your body and some are very large compared to the eye. However, while small, the eye is still the most complex. As a bonus fact, skin is an organ and it’s the largest organ in your body.

On Average, We Blink About 5 Million Times Every Year

That’s roughly 13,698 times per day, 570 times per hour, or 9.5 times per minute. That is a lot of time in our lives spent with our eyes closed, in addition to sleeping.

Your Eyes Are Able to Process Over 36,000 Pieces of Information Per Hour

Basically, your eyes have the ability to efficiently send data to your brain for processing in order for you to evaluate what you are seeing and contextualize it immediately.

We Don’t Know Why We Cry When Upset

We’re the only ones on the Earth that do it. The function of tears is known already by scientists and that is to keep your eyes clean. But still, scientists haven’t come to any concrete conclusions about why people cry when they are upset, only theories.

Roughly 40,000 Corneas Get Transplanted Per Year in the US

That’s a lot of people suffering from serious medical conditions causing problems with eyesight. It’s important to treat your eyes with care in order to prevent future medical problems.

Your Eyes Contribute to About 85% of Your Total Knowledge

Some of us may call ourselves auditory or kinetic learners, but the reality is that most of our knowledge comes from our eyes and looking at what is in front of us.

Technically, We See Upside Down

Due to the way that the front parts of our eyes are curved, they bend the light, which actually creates an upside-down image on the retina. The brain then rotates the image as we perceive it. So everything that we are looking at was first considered upside-down by our body.

We Can See Roughly 1,000,000 Colors

Healthy people have three different and distinct types of cone cells and each type can register about 100 different color shades. This makes the total number of colors that we can perceive roughly a million. Still, it varies from person to person and it’s hard to put an exact figure down. On the other hand, there is a special type of butterfly, the Japanese Yellow Swallowtail, that remarkably has 15 types of cone cells, a whopping five times more than us humans.

It’s Possible to Blink Five Times Per Second

While hard, it’s possible! Each blink, when done quickly, can be finished in as fast as 0.2 seconds, leaving room for five blinks per second. A blink usually lasts 100-150 milliseconds

Your Eye Has The Fastest Muscles

While it’s an organ, it’s made up of six muscles. It has the fastest muscles in the whole body which is why when something happens quickly, people say “in the blink of an eye”.

Your Eyes Technically Have 576 Megapixels

This is only true in theory. If the human eye were to be compared to a digital camera, the megapixels would come out this way. Seems like we still have a far way to go from technology catching up.

Final Thoughts

Our eyes are very unique organs and it’s fun to learn various facts about them. One important thing to keep in mind is that keeping your eyes healthy throughout the entirety of your life is extremely important. No one wants to start losing their vision as they get older. Again, next time you search for a “pharmacy near me”, or “pharmacy store near Lexington, SC”, think of us first. You can request an appointment here.