32 Animals With Amazing Eye Colors (Red, Yellow, Green, Blue etc.)

The animal kingdom is full of species with incredibly beautiful eye colors. We find colors all across the spectrum of the rainbow ranging from red and orange to green and blue.

We even find animals with yellow eyes!

Here are the most amazing animals with extreme eye colors. We have ordered them by color.

Animals With RED Eyes

Box Turtles

The male Box Turtles normally have red eyes, whereas the females often have brown or yellow eyes. That eye color really sticks out from the yellow skin, and it looks really intense as it stares right at you.

Flies

Flies are also known to have red eyes. Especially the Flesh Fly will often have big red eyes.

Its eyes are what we call “compound eyes”. Their eyes are made up of thousands of individual little receptors and they can only see shapes and movements. They function very differently from the human eye and most other eyes we find in the animal kingdom.

Moths

Moths have eyes that are quite similar to those of flies. They are also categorized as compound eyes.

Albinos (hedgehog)

We find albino animals among all animal species.

When all color pigment in the animal is gone, the eyes are red. The red color stems from the blood, and they look quite amazing.

Animals With YELLOW Eyes

We often find yellow eyes among the nocturnal animals. Those are the creatures that hunt at night and therefore have a good night vision.

The nocturnal animals have a retina with a kind of mirror on the back. This enables them to reflect the light back to the retina, and therefore an extra change to scan what is on the image. This is also what makes the eyes look like their eyes are glowing in the dark.

Crocodiles and Alligators

Crocodiles and Gators have some of the most beautiful yellow eyes among reptiles.

They have huge eyes, and this is almost the only spot where or you can hurt the animal. You can also penetrate the skin around the neck, but in real life, the Crocodiles and Gators have very few or no enemies. We call those animals the Top predators (or Apex Predators).

They are truly at the top of the food chain!

Snakes

Several snakes also half bright yellow eyes, that looks a lot like the eyes of the crocodiles.

They have the characteristic black vertical shape at the center of the eyeball, which makes them look sorta like the Eye of Saruman in The Lord Of The Rings trilogy.

Wolves

Wolves also belong to the nocturnal animals. They also hunt at night, and they can have really bright yellow eyes.

The Wolves are typically born with blue eyes and gradually through their life the eye color changes to yellow.

During the day the Wolfman have similar eyesight to that of humans, but at night they are much better at seeing motion and movement.

Snowy Owls

The owls with yellow eyes are often “Diurnal” which means they are awake both during the day and during the night.

They are found all around the world, and they typically hunt at dawn. Their weird facial structure is made in a way that enables them to hear very well. They are mostly dependent on hearing when it comes to hunting, but they have pretty good eyesight as well.

Here’s another picture of the beautiful Snowy Owl with huge yellow eyes.

Panthers

The Panther is a large black cat with intense yellow eyes. We also find that yellow eyes among domesticated yellow cats.

They are truly impressive animals and they can run as fast as 58 km/h (36 mph).

Animals With GREEN Eyes

The pigment of the iris can also be a mix of a brown pigment (called melanin) and the yellowish pigment (called lipochrome). That makes the eyes look green.

Here’s a turtle with green eyes.

Frogs

Frogs will also often have yellow and green eyes. The line Brothers between the green and the yellowish eyes, and they also stem from the same color pigment (lipochrome).

Lemurs

Lemur can have incredible amber-green eyes. They can also be other colors but the handsome fella below certainly has very charming greenish eyeballs!

Monkeys

Monkeys can have a wide variety of eye colors just like humans. This little fella has pretty dark green eyes.

We will also look at a lot of other monkeys in this article, as we explore animals with other eye colors than green.

Chameleons

We could probably find a Chameleon for each category of color. They are probably the best species to camouflage themselves because they can change the color of their skin according to their surroundings.

Animals With BLUE Eyes

As we mentioned above, the wolves are typically born with blue eyes. They gradually turn more yellow over the lifetime of the cup, and they are very beautiful as well when they are light blue.

The code blue color goes really well with the snow Wolf’s skin. The whole winter landscape in which they live already has a cold blue tone and that makes it that much prettier.

Take a look at this amazing wolf laying in the snow with very intense light blue eyes:

The blue eye color is also very common among domestic cats.

Sphynx cats

The Sphynx cats have big ears, but that’s not the only thing that stands out on this cute little face. The eyes also really stand out, they are very big and intense. This cat has deep blue eyes which is quite common among this species.

You can read more about the Sphynx cats in this article about animals with huge eyes.

Here’s another domestic cat with beautiful blue eyes:

Mountain Lions

These mountain lion cubs are extremely cute.

They have been very dark blue eyes, and that’s quite common among mountain lions. As the little cubs mature, their eyes will turn greener. But sometimes they will remain light blue.

It’s also not uncommon to see blue eyes among bigger birds.

This fella has a very beautiful blue ring around the black eyeball.

Animals With ORANGE Eyes

Orange eyes are also often referred to as “amber eyes”. It’s quite rare among humans but in the animal kingdom, we often see it.

It’s caused by the lipochrome pigment we mentioned earlier, and it’s actually a very light brown-orange mix that comes from the yellow pigment.

The orange eyes (or amber eyes) are often quite solid in the color composition. Among other eye colors, we typically find a variety of colors, but orange eyes are typically orange all the way to the center.

Frogs

This little frog has dark orange eyes that match its fingers. Frogs will also often have reddish eyes, so it’s borderline between orange and red.

White-faced Saki (monkey)

As we mentioned before, monkeys have all sorts of eye colors. The White-faced Saki below has big orange eyeballs.

They are typically a little darker than the monkey below, but they often have a yellow tone and that makes them look that more intelligent.

Animals with BLACK eyes

A very common eye color among animals is black.

Eyes with a lot of melanin pigment appear almost black, but often they are just very dark brown. It also depends a lot on the lighting.

Here are some of the beautiful all black-eyed animals.

Ravens and Crows

Ravens and Crows have been surrounded by myths for ages. Probably because of their dark appearance. All the feathers, as well as the eyes, are almost completely black with a blue shine.

You can read a lot more about how to keep ravens and crows as pets here.

Crabs

This very special crap is quite famous for its pointy black eyes. The eyes are positioned at the end of two little movable sticks. They are placed at the front of the head and point forward.

Meercats

Another animal with completely black eyes all the way from the iris to the outer ring is the Meerkat.

They even have dark rings around the eyeballs, which help them see well in direct sunlight. It is said to reduce the glare of the sun and thereby enabling them to look more directly even when the sun is low.

Snakes

Snake eyes are often talked about for several reasons. They can be very intense like the snake we looked at earlier in this article, and this snake has very dark eyes.

The eyes are positioned at each side of the head and that enables the snake to see what’s going on all around it.

Pit bulls

Pit bulls are fierce little dogs when a very strong bite. They also have very dark eyes, which they inherited from their primary ancestor: The Bulldog.

Seals

Seals probably have the darkest eyes in all of the animal world. They primarily need to see underwater which is probably why they have such big eyes in order to lead to more light in.

This also makes the little tiny babies very cute as they stare at you with those huge eyes.

Rabbits

Rabbits are cute with their big dark eyes. They will also typically have very dark and almost black eyes. Sometimes they will also be more dark-brown.

Monkeys

Here they are again, the monkeys. Just like cats, monkeys have all varieties of eye colors.

This little fella has completely dark eyes, and you almost cannot see the iris in the middle. But the iris is actually a tad darker than the rest.

Animals with WHITE eyes

The white part of the human eyes is called “Sclera”. It’s the color around the iris, and some animals also have white eyes like humans, even though the iris typically will be a lot darker.

Flamingos

Flamingos are pink as you know, and the eyes are almost white with a very dark iris. Even the eyes can seem pink due to the reflection from the skin around the eyes.

Parrots

Parrots can have white eyes and they can also have eyes with many other colors. Typically the iris is dark and then the sclera (the white around the iris) is almost completely white.

Gorillas

Gorillas are very human-like with their dark iris and the white sclera around the iris.

Gorillas have six muscles to control eye movement just like humans and the sclera are more yellow than white, but among younger Gorillas, it can be almost white like with humans.

Animals with 2 different colored eyes

Some animal has two different sets of eye colors. This condition is called “heterochromia iridum” which literally means “Two colors iris” and it’s very rare. It happens very early on during the development of the iris when the animal is only a fetus.

It happens to less than one percent of humans, but it’s more common among our animal friends.

Dog with one yellow and one blue eye

This very special dog has one brown eye and one light blue eye. It’s mesmerizing to look at, and it’s also super-cute at the same time. Who could resist these puppy-eyes, if they begged for a biscuit?

4 cats with two different eye colors

The first cat has one very yellow eye and one darker blue eye. It’s really weird to look at.

Here’s another cat with the exact same eye colors. On top of that this little cutie has a black stripe across the left eye.

This cat has one green and one blue color. The iris is black and it’s the sclera around the iris that’s colored with these strong and beautiful colors.

Here’s what it looks like when you take a photo of a cat with two eye colors. When the flash from the camera reaches the eye, it is reflected by the little mirror-like part behind the iris and the different colors of the iris reflect two very different results.

One eye is completely red and the other is dark green.

When you take a very close look at an eyeball, you will notice that it consists of many different colors and several layers. I myself have green eyes, but when you examine them closely you will see all sorts of colors like brown, green, yellow, and even grey.

Animal Eye Color At Night

You might have noticed that some animals seem to have almost glowing eyes at night. Some animals reflect a very strong red or yellow color when you point a flashlight toward them.

It sounds like something straight out of a horror movie but the fact is that animal eyes are actually constructed a little different than human eyes. Because of that, they can light up with a strong color at night.

What determines the eye color among animals and humans?

We find two different colors of pigment in the eyes:

  1. The brown melanin pigment
  2. The yellow lipochrome pigment

On the other eye colors actually stems from do used to pigment types. Except when we talk about albinos with red eyes, because this is the lack of color pigment, and you only see the red color from the block.

All the different colors are determined by where and how in the iris the pigment colors are distributed. With blue eyes, there will be more melanin towards the back of the iris, whereas with green eyes there is less melanin in the back of the iris.

All creatures inherited a set of chromosomes from their parents, and the unique DNA determines what color the eyes will develop. Some colors are more dominant than others (e.g. green and brown eyes), and if you inherited blue eyes, there will have to be blue eyes on both your mom and dad’s side.

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