Do All Animals Have Red Blood?
(hint: nope. BIG nope.)
What IS blood, anyway?
But do you know what blood actually is? Blood is nature's way of making sure we have oxygen everywhere we need it in our bodies. And like everything else in our bodies, blood needs to be MADE. Yup, the same way you need ingredients to make a cake, you ALSO need ingredients to make blood. Only to make blood you don't need an oven, you just need bone marrow. That's where you're blood is made!
Recipe for Blood
- white blood cells (these things fight infections!)
- red blood cells (the cells that carry oxygen all over your body)
- platelets (these are the reason you stop bleeding when you get a cut)
- plasma (a yellowy liquid that helps carry proteins and other good stuff throughout your body
Put all of these together and you get the blood that circulated all through your body!
Red blood cells
(they look like red donuts, sort of)
White blood cells
See those fuzzy looking globs? Those are white blood cells!
Look closely and you'll see a bunch of tiny purple dots—those are the platelets! (the rest of the blobs are red blood cells)
Human Blood is RED... but what about other animals?
Red Rover, Red Rover, Let Oxygen Over!
But what about animals who DON'T have hemoglobin in their blood?
Prasinohaema (say what?!)
FUN FACT: This bile is also one of the reasons lizards taste disgusting. It's a good way to keep predators from wanting to eat you!
A Lobster, an octopus, and a crab all walk into a bar...
Note: Spock's* Blood
(*It is also important to note that Spock is fiction. Sorry.)
FUN FACT: Insect blood is called hemolymph.
CRYSTAL CLEAR? Meet the Crocodile Icefish!
(also known as "The One They Thought was a Hoax"
The icefish has NO respiratory pigment. None at all. It's blood is colorless, and they don't use any special molecules to carry oxygen around their bodies. How do they survive? Icefish are lucky to live in the very cold waters of Antarctica (there is more oxygen in cold water!), so it can absorb lots of it through its skin. They also don't move very fast, so they don't need as much oxygen as other fish. Being lazy comes in handy sometimes.
If you could have blood of any color, what would you choose?
Fancy Words to Know:
- bone marrow: a thick, spongy jelly inside your bones
- hemoglobin: an oxygen-carrying pigment in red blood cells
- respiratory pigment: a protein that carries oxygen throughout the body
- hemocyanin: a respiratory pigment that contains copper, found in some arthropods and mollusks
- hemolymph: the circulatory fluid of insects
Thanks for Reading!
Thanks for tuning in! If you have any suggestions for future Keating Creature Issues, drop me a line at the info below! Anything science or animal related is fair game!
- How to Outrun a Crocodile When Your Shoes are Untied, is now out from Sourcebooks Jabberwocky!
- How to Outswim a Shark Without a Snorkel, is coming in January 2015! Click the link to add it to Goodreads!
- Pink is for Blobfish, from Knopf, coming in 2016
Links and Pic References
- White blood cells: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_blood_cell
- platelets: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platelet
- skink: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skink
- Lobster: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobster
- Octopus: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Octopus_at_Kelly_Tarlton's.jpg
- Horseshoe crab: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mangrove_horseshoe_crab
- Beetle: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Green_tiger_beetle_1.jpg
- Icefish: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channichthyidae