Eye Trivia and Interesting Eye Facts

While putting together our new redesigned site, we asked our doctors for facts and trivia about eyes. You’ll find them scattered all around the site, but here are a few extra ones you may find interesting.

The average person blinks 12 times per minute – about 10,000 blinks in an average day.


Only 1/6th of the eyeball is exposed to the outside world.


Eyelashes have an average life span of 5 months.


About half of our brain is involved in the seeing process. Humans are very much visual animals.


The external muscles that move the eyes are the strongest muscles in the human body for the job that they have to do. They are 100 times more powerful than they need to be.


The eyeball of a human weighs approximately 28 grams, or one ounce.


Ophthalmologists are graduates of a medical school, whereas optometrists are not.


Cataract formation is a normal aging phenomenon, and so all animals in the kingdom that see will get cataracts if they live long enough.


In Lasik, the accuracy is measured in microns. A micron is one-millioneth of a meter.


On a dark night, a human eye can see a candle flickering 30 miles away.


You see with your brain. ​ The eyes sense light and is connected to the brain by over a million nerve fibers.


Theodore Roosevelt is the only president who lost an eye while still in office.


The word “eyeball” was coined by William Shakespeare in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.


The giant squid has the largest eye.


At any given point, your eyeballs are moving 70 to 100 times per second all over.


Our eyes are always the same size from birth, but our nose and ears never stop growing.


Women blink nearly twice as much as men.


Babies cry but don’t produce tears until one to three months after birth.


Of all the muscles in our body, the eye muscles are the most active.


All babies no matter what nationality or race, have blue eyes in the womb.


The shark cornea has been used in eye surgery, since its cornea is similar to a human cornea.


The most common injury caused by cosmetics is to the eye by a mascara wand.