Are blue eyes related to deafness?
Gwydion chasing snowflakes Sorta, kinda, but not really. Not much of an answer is it? There are basically two ways for a dog to get blue eyes. Some breeds just produce a lot of blue-eyed dogs (Aussies – eye pictures – or northern husky-type breeds are examples). Blue eyes are a recessive gene, so the dog must inherit blue as both eye-color genes. There is no relationship between this type of blue eyes and deafness. Some dogs have what I would call “lack of color” blue eyes (if you look at the pictures above, you will see that Gwen has very pale, almost white, blue eyes). This happens when the eye color genes are overridden by another factor (there are a lot of genetic factors that can cause this). Whatever eye color the dog was supposed to have is washed out, and the lack of pigment causes blue eyes. Since deafness is also caused by a lack of pigment, the cause of the deafness and the blue eyes is the same, but one does not necessarily go with the other. It’s kind of one of those coinc
