[HN Gopher] Animals Whose Blood Isn't Red
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Animals Whose Blood Isn't Red
Author : warrenm
Score : 48 points
Date : 2023-11-20 13:20 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (animals.howstuffworks.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (animals.howstuffworks.com)
| ortusdux wrote:
| There is a condition called Sulfhemoglobinemia wherein you blood
| takes up sulfur instead of iron and your blood turns green.
| temp0826 wrote:
| Wikipedia says vulcans have green blood due to copper-based
| hemocyanin. Seems logical.
| mike_hock wrote:
| Everything about Vulcans seems logical.
| cli_shall wrote:
| Fascinating.
| gilleain wrote:
| Interesting - a minor point, but the sulfur does not seem to
| replace the iron, but is just an -SH group on the haem.
| kulahan wrote:
| Wow, that's an extremely green blood if Google's images are to
| be believed
| markx2 wrote:
| Minor yet important typo.
|
| "Crocodile icefish frequent brutally cold portions of the sea
| where the water temperature can plummet all the way down to 28.5
| degrees Fahrenheit (1.9 degrees Celsius). That's below the point
| at which fresh water freezes."
|
| 28.5F is minus -1.94C
| croisillon wrote:
| would be great if there was an easy mnemotechnics to remember
| at how many degrees Celsius fresh water freezes
| analog31 wrote:
| It's easy to remember, exactly 100 degrees below the boiling
| point.
| dekhn wrote:
| it's just kelvins offset by 273.15!
| dspillett wrote:
| <pendant>If we are allowing "to one decimal point" as
| "exact", and are taking about one standard atmospheric
| pressure, yes.</pendant>
|
| Even at one atmosphere pure water can exist in its solid
| state at 0.010C.
| KMag wrote:
| I doubt there's any simple way to remember that non-linear
| pressure vs. freezing point function for water.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > 28.5F is minus -1.94C
|
| Myself, I don't throw stones.
| crazygringo wrote:
| ...and yet not a single picture of the blood of _any_ of them.
| medstrom wrote:
| Right?! That'd be the first thing on my agenda if I wanted to
| write an article with that title.
|
| I'll choose to believe the writers didn't especially have an
| interest, they were just paid to write.
| dvh wrote:
| If the news article contains "... caught on video" there's
| like 50% chance there will be video in that news article.
| moritzwarhier wrote:
| I didn't read the article, but the infinite scrolling
| experience, extremely long text and overall site appearance
| makes me question if this was written by a "journalist" or
| "author" at all. I might be wrong, sad then, but this page
| looks SEO 1x1, AI or not.
|
| Manages to quiet down my interest sparked by the headline
| quite well.
| james_pm wrote:
| Is this why blood has a metallic taste? It's literally metallic?
| s0rce wrote:
| I'm pretty sure, yes.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| I've never bought the official explanation for this. We have
| just four iron atoms per hemoglobin. But the roughly quarter-
| billion of these per red blood cell are _in_ the red blood
| cells, which presumably haven 't all suddenly lysed and
| dumped their hemoglobin.
|
| I think we should test with blood plasma first. I'm thinking
| it is the various salts in the plasma we're tasting, not the
| iron bound up in hemoglobin which is itself trapped inside of
| red blood cells.
| r2_pilot wrote:
| I was going to say, it's always been a more copper-y taste
| to me and that's what I usually read in descriptions of the
| taste.
| dekhn wrote:
| I'd describe it more like an umami-rich sauce.
|
| Which it is...
| s0rce wrote:
| If you are a vampire.
| s0rce wrote:
| Did some more reading, can't find much conclusive, you
| might be right, this reddit post is probably one of the
| better discussions
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/biology/comments/cqes9/why_does_bl
| o...
| jacquesm wrote:
| Yes, iron. You can clearly taste it. That's one of the things I
| noticed after using a plasmacutter to cut through sheet, the
| vaporized iron stays afloat long enough that if you take off
| your mask and get a whiff it smells like blood.
| Night_Thastus wrote:
| I was under the impression the iron in the blood was in the
| form of hemoglobin. Does hemoglobin itself have a metallic
| taste, or is the taste caused by something else in the blood?
| jacquesm wrote:
| Good question I do not know but I associate the two (blood,
| iron vapor) very closely. It may well be that the blood
| also contains some free iron but Iron is so toxic that I
| doubt that would be enough to taste directly so it may well
| that haemoglobin itself tastes metallic but it only has a
| handful of Iron atoms in it compared to a mountain of other
| stuff.
| jihadjihad wrote:
| Surprised there is no mention of lobsters, who, like crocodile
| icefish have colorless blood. For lobsters it appears blue once
| it comes in contact with oxygen [0].
|
| 0: https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/national/outreach-and-
| educati...
| gilleain wrote:
| Also they miss mentioning
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erythrocruorin which is green,
| but for a different reason than biliverdin in lizards.
|
| Seems it has chlorocruorin in which looks very much like a
| 'normal' haem (i can't spot the difference off hand).
|
| edit: Ok, from Figure 2 here :
| https://biomolecules101.wordpress.com/2020/01/17/oxygen-tran...
| looks like normal heme ('heme b') has an ethenyl group while
| chlorocruorin has an aldehyde there
| whearyou wrote:
| How could they leave off Vulcans? Gross oversight
| kulahan wrote:
| Along a similar line, look into animals that don't sweat clear!
| Hippos sweat red, so they look like they're just covered in blood
| sometimes. Horses sweat white, so they look like they're just...
| well, you can go see for yourself.
| _a_a_a_ wrote:
| I'm surprised hemocyanin isn't poisonous to us, or at least bad.
| Ingesting copper just doesn't sound healthy. AFAIC it isn't
| something we usually do either, so no pressure to evolve a way to
| metabolise it either.
| dekhn wrote:
| We eat about 1mg of copper a day. It's an essential trace
| mineral. You can consume 10mg safely per day.
| _a_a_a_ wrote:
| Huh. Didn't know. Thanks!
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