If you have amber eyes, you’re a member of a small global family, for you are blessed with one of humankind’s rarest eye colors (green eyes are considered the other most rare).

Only an estimated 5% of people have an amber eye color. However, it is more common in the animal kingdom: A number of animals commonly have amber-colored eyes, including wolves, dogs, cats, eagles, owls, pigeons and fish. In fact, eyes this color are sometimes referred to as “wolf eyes.”

“Not quite dark enough to be brown and not quite light enough to be yellow, amber eyes have a reputation for taking many people’s breath away,” according to Woman’s World magazine.

What is amber eye color?

Rare amber eyes are yellow-brown, often described as having a golden or copper hue.

To understand the amber eye color, it may help to understand how eye color is determined in the first place. We’ll go into this a little more later, but here’s a preview to explain how eyes can appear amber:

The colored part of the eye is known as the iris. Melanin pigments contribute to the front layer of the iris, just as they contribute to skin and hair color. Melanin comes in two forms: eumelanin and pheomelanin. Eumelanin is brownish-black, while pheomelanin is reddish-yellow.

Amber borrows some of its color from eumelanin and some of the color from pheomelanin (also called lipochrome). It’s thought that amber eyes contain a high level of pheomelanin.

Amber is one of six eye colors. The others are blue, brown, gray, green and hazel. Amber eye color can occur in a spectrum of shades, from very dark amber to light amber eyes.

While there are only six eye colors, no two people have eyes that are precisely the same color… as with amber, all eye colors come in a vast spectrum of shades and blends.

Who has amber eyes?

People with amber-colored eyes often have Asian, Spanish, South American or South African roots, as do people with brown eyes. People with blue, gray, green and hazel eyes are of European ancestry.