Eyes changing color

Factual Questions
1

This morning I let RealPlayer out to play on the internet while I was listening to David Bowie’s Greatest Hits (they’re not). Like little dead mice, little factoids start to appear in the top right corner. Some appear to be apocryphal, and composed by John Cleese and Graham Chapman (for example: “In 1966, David Bowie spent several weeks at a Scottish Buddhist monastery. Upon leaving, he joined a mime troupe.”).

One of these states that Bowie’s eyes are two different colors as the result of a schoolyard fight. Now I’ve been in a schoolyard fight or two and not only are my eyes the same color, they are same color they were when I was five. I understand that schoolyard fights in Brixton might be somewhat more serious affairs, but I’ve never heard of anyone else’s eyes changing color as the result of fight.

Is this possible? How bad a beating would someon have to take before his eye turned green?

2

The pupil in one of his eyes is stuck in one position because of the boxing incident. The color is the same.

3

Well that is what I thought. It seemed like such an odd thing to say, and I couldn’t imagine a mechanism for something like that happening.

4

This pic shows it pretty clearly:

As was previously mentioned, they look a different color because the pupil in one eye is a different size than the other eye. IIRC, he can’t really see out of the damaged eye much, if at all.

5

I though his eyes really were different colors. I used to have ChangesOne and in the photo on the cover he definitely seems to have one green and one blue eye.

6

The Master Speaks

I try never to miss a chance to refer folks to a column.

7

Kate Bosworth has (AFAIK congenital) heterochromia iridis.

David Bowie looks a lot like this pic of siderosis bulbi. Siderosis bulbi is caused by an intra-ocular foreign body which contains iron. The iron can then enter and damage cells, in the iris this can cause changes in pigmentation.

So, if David Bowie got a speck of iron in his eye during the fight then yes, this explanation of his differently cloured eyes would be perfectly sound.

8

Well that makes sense and explains why the bad eye is the darker one. Thank you.

9

Mine are two different colors, but it had nothing to do with any schoolyard fight, and my pupils are equal and react to light.

10

That’s incredibly cool. I wish someone woulda punched my face during puberty. I guess I’m stuck with the boring, matching irises…

11

It looks like yours are actually each the same two colors, with different distributions of each pigment.

12

Siderosis Bulbi doesn’t look all that cool, from irishgirl’s link. Also when you tell people what it is, it sounds like a lady’s problem, if you know what I mean.