It is estimated that artist Pablo Picasso created 13,500 paintings and about 100,000 prints and engravings. A creative genius, his best-known works span periods from the Blue Period to Cubism to Neoclassism and Surrealism, with others in between. His unique style is recognizable to almost anyone, but did you know that Picasso had a vision condition that is believed to have influenced his art?

Researchers used to think that eye color was determined by a single gene and followed a simple inheritance pattern in which brown eyes were dominant to blue eyes. However, later studies showed that this model was too simplistic. The inheritance of eye color is more complex than originally suspected because multiple genes are involved. Most of the genes associated with eye color are involved in the production, transport, or storage of the pigment melanin. Eye color is directly related to the amount and quality of melanin in the front layers of the iris. People with brown eyes have a large amount of melanin in the iris, while people with blue eyes have much less.

Light, or visible light, is but a small portion of the electromagnetic spectrum that our eyes can detect. The visible light spectrum consists of wavelengths of light (from shortest to longest) violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange, red, and travels from the sun at 186,000/miles per second before it strikes an object. Depending on the object it strikes, it will either absorb, reflect, or refract the light. As an example, let's use a red apple. When sunlight, or white light, strikes the apple, the component colors are broken down and all the wavelengths of light are absorbed with the exception of the red wavelengths; they are being reflected. As our eyes process this information and fine-tune this data, our brain interprets this, and we see that all the colors except red are absorbed by the apple. The red wavelength is reflected, and therefore the apple appears red.

I live in an area that is a spawning ground for horseshoe crabs in early summer. They’re odd-looking creatures that remind me of miniature amphibious tanks storming the beach. I noticed two lateral eyes near the front of the dorsal shell that didn’t seem to be particularly useful when the crabs took circuitous routes to find their way back to the water. Curious as to how they navigated, I did some research and found some surprising information.