// ocs, infodumps, and drabbles (ヾ;￣▽￣)ヾ

+ interview: kiroka - "why do your eyes look like that?"

why do your eyes resemble that of a cat's, kiroka?

"ah, that. well, it's a family inherited trait. my sister and i got it from our father."

where did this trait come from?

"i was told that a long time ago, one of our great-grandmothers worked on a nuclear power plant, which was apparently leaking radioactive material everywhere. she did not know that she was pregnant at the time, and quit the job when she found out. when the baby was born, the boy looked completely normal, except he was born with blue eyes, which is very strange considering her and her husband were full-blooded japanese. time passed, and she fed the baby well and gave him all his veggies, and she noticed something even more strange—his irises were turning yellow, and his pupils started to vertically dilate, like that of a cat's."

is there any reason why this started to happen?

"nekonome eyes have very special color receptors in the iris, and strange muscle behaviors. basically, our irises contain very few melanin receptors, but many receptors for beta-carotene. this is very strange for humans, because these are pigments naturally found in vegetables like sweet potatoes and carrots. when we eat foods containing high beta-carotene content, we store those pigments in our irises, giving them their yellow color. this is because of the combination of brown melanin (and a lack thereof that produces blue and green colors) and orange beta-carotene. some of our eyes look a bit different, though, like how my eyes are more orange-tinted, where my sister's are more green-tinted. our dad has more brown-tinted eyes than ours, because he has more melanin receptors in his eyes than we do."

so how did it become a genetically-inherited trait?

"when our far great-grandmother was pregnant, the radioactive materials messed with the dna makeup of her son, mutating the specific color receptors in his eyes to denature and change shape to fit beta-carotene. since this change was engraved in his dna, when he had children, three of the four were born with eyes like his. it's a dominant trait in our family, much like brown eyes are a dominant trait. the only nekonome in my family that i know of who doesn't have the eyes is my half-sister, rika. she got her mother's black eyes."