2025 February 17
2 Pain read
Why do wild cats have so many different eye colors?
Internet cat resource resources help the researcher table evolving the cat

Snow Leopard colorful eye.
Photo of Tambako The Jaguar / Getty Images
Wild cats show an amazing diversity of eye colors, which demonstrate mystery for researchers, because the wildest species have narrow eye colors (usually black, brown or yellow). The evolution of the evolution of the eye is not followed: fossils do not preserve, taxidermy grains have manufactured eyes, and most books show only one example of each species. Scientists take advantage of the many photos of the wild cats on the internet, to go to colors like green and blue transition from brown eyes, and they found something like.
Animal eye color Melanin is determined by two levels of pigment: eumelin, brown-black and feomelanine, which makes red yellow. The colors of the eyes vary depending on the amounts of each, with different combinations of colors like blue, green and gray color.
For a paper at iscienceHarvard University Biology Qualified Student Julius Tabin and his author, Katherine Chiasson used the process of the State of the ancestors to determine the eye colors of wild cat species that depend on their descendants. The authors analyzed the clearest images submitted in the database INNURALIST.ORG database, then classified each cat’s eye color and mapped data Cat family treeUsing an algorithm to find each possible eye color of ancestors. The algorithm had a probability of change and when the species were diverted at the time, the most vivid colors were split.
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“It’s a way to look into the eyes of the Felid ancestor,” Tabin said. “The ancestor develops gray eyes, and then the diversity of eye colors is just exploding.” Eumnel and Feomelanine were moderate amounts (producing gray eyes), blue and green were not behind.
The next scientists discovered that the discovered eye colors connect with many factors, including habitat, leather color and hunting behavior, to help explain why these tones evolved. But they found little correlation. “Huskiek have bright blue eyes,” saying, “in the wild cats,” I don’t know what’s happening here. It would be.
The color of the eyes “is very forgotten, and it is probably very important because it is very important and evolutively,” says Glasgow University of Arianna Passarotto biologist, who does not affiliate with the new study. The use of photos taken under uncontrolled conditions is skeptical, but it describes the “ambitious” study and “fully novel”.
Juan José Negro, an ecologist from the Spanish National Research Council has affiliated with the study, is the last limit to “Eye (Learning) Coloring”.