Blue blood. Which animals have blue blood? Which animals have green or blue blood?

This photograph shows the process of taking blood from a real animal in a US medical laboratory.
They write that this process does not cause any harm to the animal.

Who knows what animal on earth has blue blood?

Have you ever heard of such an amazing living creature as the horseshoe crab? On English language its name literally sounds like “horseshoe crab,” but the horseshoe crab (lat. Xiphosura) has nothing in common with either an ordinary crab or, of course, a horseshoe crab. At the same time, in terms of its position in the natural world, the horseshoe crab is related to crabs and even spiders.

In the scientific community, the horseshoe crab is better known as Limulus polyphemus. Translated from Latin, “polyphemus” means “many-eyed,” which best characterizes appearance this creature. The horseshoe crab has four eyes, two of which are on the side and two in the front. The front eyes, at the same time, are so close to each other that they seem to merge into one eye.

According to scientists, horseshoe crabs can be classified as fossil animals that have survived to this day. The history of the existence of this living creature spans two hundred million years, and during this time appearance horseshoe crabs have remained virtually unchanged. There are very few such unique examples in nature that are so attractive for scientific observation and study.

The horseshoe crab's body is protected by a reliable shell, while its lateral eyes allow it to detect the slightest movement from all sides. The animal's tail has several spiny protrusions, which also make it possible to maintain balance in strong water currents. When turning over, the horseshoe crab quickly regains its previous position using the movement of its tail.

The horseshoe crab has six pairs of limbs, four of which help move along the seabed. In addition, the short limbs at the front allow the creature to hold and absorb food, while the longest hind limbs help the creature swim. The mouth opening of a horseshoe crab is hidden behind those four limbs, thanks to which it can move along the bottom.

Another surprising thing is that the horseshoe crab has no teeth. Being a complete omnivore, the horseshoe crab has to absorb food, tearing it into small pieces. Its main prey is carrion, algae, fish eggs, as well as all kinds of sea oysters and worms.

The respiratory apparatus of the horseshoe crab consists of gills consisting of one and a half hundred very thin plates that release and absorb oxygen from the water. The creature can breathe as long as its gills are kept moist.

Like fish and crustaceans, horseshoe crabs reproduce by spawning. When born, the small horseshoe crab does not yet have a tail and is, as it were, dressed in a soft shell. But after a month they grow out of the shell, which has time to harden, and often shed it. The length of an adult horseshoe crab can reach 60 centimeters, and, of course, it often has to shed its shells, which interfere with body growth.

The horseshoe crab is a real miracle of nature, which came to our days from those distant times when there were not only humans, but also modern flora and fauna

And his blood is blue, because it contains not iron, like ours, but copper. Copper oxide gives horseshoe crab blood a bluish tint. Horseshoe crab blood is used in medical purposes, a reagent is made from it to test the purity of medical preparations: if the preparation is contaminated with microorganisms or products of their activity, the blood coagulates.

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Does blood have to be red? Why shouldn’t it, for example, be green or blue, or, in general, like in the movie “Predator,” glow in the dark? Do you remember the colorless blood-acid in Alien? Or the “blue blood” of Russian nobles? Isn't it cool? So, let's try to figure out what causes the color of blood:

All people have red blood. As you know, it gives color hemoglobin, which is the main component of the red blood cell, filling it by 1/3. It is formed as a result of the interaction of the globin protein with four iron atoms and a number of other elements. It is thanks to iron oxide (Fe 2+) that hemoglobin acquires red color. All vertebrates, some species of insects and mollusks have iron oxide in their blood protein, and therefore their blood has a scarlet color.

But it turns out that blood doesn’t have to be red at all. Some animals have blood of a completely different color. For example, in some invertebrates, oxygen is carried not by hemoglobin, but by another iron-containing protein - hemerythrin or chlorocruorin.

Hemerythrin, which is a respiratory pigment in the blood of brachiopods, contains five times more iron than hemoglobin. Oxygenated hemerythrin gives blood violet tint, and having given oxygen to the tissues, such blood becomes pink. Hemerythrin is localized in cells, which, unlike ordinary red blood cells, are called pink blood cells.

But in polychaete worms the respiratory pigment is another iron-containing protein - chlorocruorin, dissolved in blood plasma. Chlorocruorin is close to hemoglobin, but its basis is not oxide iron, but ferrous iron, which gives blood and tissue fluid green color.

However, nature is not limited to these options. The transfer of oxygen and carbon dioxide, it turns out, may well be carried out by respiratory pigments based on ions of other metals (besides iron).

For example, at sea ​​squirts blood colorless, since it is based on - hemovanadium, containing vanadium ions.

Do you remember our nobles with blue blood? It turns out that this happens in nature, but the truth is only in octopuses, octopuses, spiders, crabs and scorpions. The reason for such a noble color lies in the fact that the respiratory pigment of their blood is not hemoglobin, but hemocyanin, in which copper (Cu 2+) is present instead of iron. Combining with atmospheric oxygen, hemocyanin turns blue, and, giving oxygen to tissues, it becomes somewhat discolored. As a result of this, these animals have blood flowing in their arteries. blue blood, and in the veins is blue. If hemoglobin is usually found both in plasma and in blood cells (most often in red blood cells), then hemocyanin is simply dissolved in blood plasma. Interestingly, there are organisms, for example, some mollusks, which can simultaneously contain hemoglobin and hemocyanin, and in some cases one of them acts as an oxygen carrier in the blood, and the other in the tissues.

By the way, there are still known cases when people turned out to have blue blood. True, not at all among the nobles. The Trud newspaper once published about one such case (dated March 17, 1992):

“Mikheev, a resident of Severodvinsk, decided to donate blood for noble reasons, and also to receive a discount coupon for lunch. He passed. The doctors looked at it and gasped: the blood turned out to be a strange bluish color. They sent it for analysis to the Arkhangelsk Toxicology Laboratory. It turned out that the unusual color was caused by functional changes in the liver. And these changes are associated with Mikheev’s habit of drinking alcohol-containing liquids of ignoble, let’s say, origin. For example... wood stain...” Who knows, maybe our blue-blooded kings also didn’t disdain stain... ;-)

Well, and finally, a tablet where all this completely useless knowledge about the color of blood is brought together:

P.S. By the way, why did I get interested in this stupid question about the color of blood... The fact is that last week I had fun with the fact that, together with kpblca wrote a semi-fiction story. The beginning, but the unfinished “story” itself. By the way, maybe there will be people willing to write a sequel to it...

Update (14-Jun-2003): The story would be incomplete if, having told about red, green, blue, blue and violet blood, I did not mention the blood of yellow and orange flowers, which is often found in insects.

The reason that I forgot about this blood is that I was looking for information about respiratory pigments, and in insects the blood (or more precisely, the hemolymph) is devoid of these pigments and does not participate in the transfer of oxygen at all. Respiration in insects is carried out using tracheas - branching tubes that directly connect cells internal organs with the air environment. The air inside the tracheal tube is motionless. There is no forced ventilation, and the flow of oxygen into the body (as well as the outflow carbon dioxide) occurs due to diffusion when the partial pressures of these gases differ at the inner and outer ends of the tube.

This oxygen supply mechanism strictly limits the length of the tracheal tube, the maximum length of which is quite simply calculated, so the maximum size of the body of the insect itself (in cross-section) cannot exceed the size chicken egg. However, if we had higher pressure on the planet, insects could reach gigantic sizes (as in science fiction horror films).

The color of hemolymph in insects can be almost any color, because... it contains many different substances, including poisons and acids. Thus, the blister family got its name precisely because of the ability of its representatives (for example, the Spanish fly) to secrete drops from the joints of the thighs and legs yellow blood, which when it comes into contact with human skin causes burns and abscess-like watery blisters.

The hemolymph of representatives of many families contains very toxic substances, in particular cantharidin. If such poisonous hemolymph enters the mouth, it can cause serious poisoning and even death. Blood is especially poisonous ladybugs- specific odor, cloudy, yellow-orange the liquid that they secrete in case of danger.

To the question: Which animals have blue blood? given by the author Deliberate the best answer is: Octopuses are cousins ​​of oysters. Their blood is unusual - blue! Dark blue when oxygenated and pale in the veins. The color of the blood of these animals depends on the metals that are part of it.

In all vertebrates, as well as in earthworm, leeches and house flies have red blood. In the blood of many sea ​​worms ferrous iron was found, and therefore the color of the blood of these worms is green.



Octopuses have two more amazing properties. First, they have not one, but three hearts! One drives blood throughout the body, and the other two push it through the gills. The second thing is that nature has endowed them with a grater, with which they prepare puree from crabs and fish.
The esophagus of octopuses is very small, therefore, despite their large appetites, they cannot swallow prey larger than a forest ant. This is where their “graters” help them. The fleshy tongue of an octopus is covered with tiny teeth. The cloves grind food, turning it into pulp. Food is moistened by saliva in the mouth and enters the stomach.
Copper was first discovered in living organisms in 1808 by the famous French chemist Louis Vauquelin, an outstanding analyst of his time. He conducted many studies of various substances and is considered one of the founders of chemical analysis.
Later, in 1834, the copper content of a number of invertebrate animals was determined. Its exact location is the hemolymph, which is blue in color. This discovery belongs to the Italian researcher B. Bisio.
So, blue blood again... Blue, and sometimes even Blue colour the blood of these animals is supplied with copper ion. Let us remember: many compounds of this element are blue, for example copper sulfate.
The blue blood of some vertebrates was first described in scientific literature by the famous Dutch naturalist Jan Swammerdam in 1669, but the nature of this phenomenon could not be explained for a long time. In 1878, the French scientist L. Frederico named the substance that gave the blood of mollusks a blue color, hemocyanin (“heme” - blood, “cyana” - blue) - by analogy with hemoglobin.


Today we know: there is no heme here. The only known porphyrin from living organisms that contains copper is the bright red pigment turacin, found only in the feathers of exotic African bird turaco. (It is curious that these birds, the largest cuckoos, are also called banana eaters, although they do not feed on bananas.)
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Answer from Maria O[guru]
Octopuses are cousins ​​of oysters. Their blood is unusual - blue!

Answer from dewy[guru]
at the octopus.

Answer from Olya Moiseeva[guru]
in octopuses, because their blood contains a lot of copper

Answer from Neuropathologist[guru]
Octopuses, spiders, crayfish and scorpions.

Answer from Yoman Lomovskoy[expert]
In octopuses, as well as spiders, crayfish and scorpions' blood is blue. Instead of hemoglobin, it contains the substance hemocyanin, with copper as the metal. Copper gives the blood a bluish color.

Answer from Milanka F[guru]
octopuses, crabs, scorpions, spiders

Answer from Suspicious foreigner[guru]
Among the noble Spanish hidalgos, who did not mix with the Moors, during Arab rule over Spain. Their skin remained light, and the veins underneath appeared blue. This is where the expression “blue blood” comes from, in the sense of “noble origin.”