Appaloosa occurs in several overlay patterns on one of several recognized base coat colors. There are three other distinctive, "core" characteristics: mottled skin, striped hooves, and eyes with a white sclera. Skin mottling is usually seen around the muzzle, eyes, anus, and genitalia. Striped hooves are a common trait, quite noticeable on Appaloosas, but not unique to the breed. The sclera is the part of the eye surrounding the iris; although all horses show white around the eye if the eye is rolled back, to have a readily visible white sclera with the eye in a normal position is a distinctive
Aberrations of the eye converge to a perfect point, the wavefront emerging from the optical system must be a perfect sphere centered on the image point. The distance in micrometers between the actual wavefront and the ideal wavefront is the wavefront aberration, which is the standard method of showing the aberrations of the eye. Therefore, aberrations of the eye are the difference between two surfaces: the ideal and the actual wavefront. In normal population the dominant aberrations are the ordinary second-order spherocylindrical focus errors, which are called refractive errors. Higher order aberrations are a relatively small component, comprising about 10% of the eye's total