Snails, spiders and octopi have something in common- they all have blue blood! We're not talking in the sense of royalty, these creatures literally have blue blood. So why is their blood blue and ours red?
Circulation. Spiders, like most arthropods, have an open circulatory system, i.e., they do not have true blood, or veins which transport it. Rather, their bodies are filled with haemolymph, which is pumped through arteries by a heart into spaces called sinuses surrounding their internal organs.
While humans and many other species have red blood, due to the iron in their hemoglobin, other animals have different colored blood. Spiders (as well as horseshoe crabs and certain other arthropods) have blue blood due to the presence of copper-based hemocyanin in their blood.
But organisms with actual blue-colored blood are far from royal. They include snails, spiders, slugs, octopuses, and squid. The protein that carries oxygen in these creatures is called hemocyanin. Instead of iron, this protein contains copper.
The fresh hemolymph of a spider shows a blue color due to the presence of copper contained in the respiratory pigment hemocyanin. The hemolymph is analogue to the blood of vertebrates and shows a variety of circulating cells called hemocytes.
Spiders have blue blood
There's actually a scientific explanation for this though. In humans, oxygen is bound to a molecule that contains iron, this gives our blood that red colour. However, in spiders the molecule that oxygen is bound to contains copper, which gives their blood the blue colour.
Spiders have blue blood
The molecule that oxygen is bound to in spider blood contains copper, which gives their blood a blue colour. Human blood contains iron molecules bound to oxygen which makes our blood red.
Vertebrates, including mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles and fish also have red blood because they too use hemoglobin as an oxygen transport protein.
What animal has purple blood? Peanut worms, which are a kind of marine worm, have purple blood. This is due to the presence of hemerythrin, an oxygen-binding protein.
Some spiders appear bright green or red or yellow, due to pigment granules. Other spiders contain crystalline deposits of guanine and strongly reflect the incoming light, either pure white or bright silvery.
The circulatory system in cockroaches is open type. The colour of the blood of the cockroach is not red it is colourless due to the absence of hemoglobin. The blood of the cockroach is known as hemolymph.
Experts warn that squashing a wolf spider may not be enough of a blow to kill all of her young. Or as pest control company Terminix puts it, if the spider you stomp on happens to be a female, the impact could release hundreds of spiderlings in your home.
All reptiles, insects and spiders are cold-blooded. This means they adapt to their surroundings by becoming hot when their environment is hot and cold when their environment is cold. Cold-blooded animals tend to be more active in warm environments but in the cold can become slow and sleepy.
Spiders do not sleep in the same way that humans do, but like us, they do have daily cycles of activity and rest. Spiders can't close their eyes because they don't have eyelids but they reduce their activity levels and lower their metabolic rate to conserve energy.
Spiders have no teeth and rely on the venom to liquefy their prey in order that their stomachs, known as sucking stomachs, can draw in the meal.
Sea cucumbers have yellow blood due to a high concentration of a yellow vanadium-based pigment called vanabin. Some members of the phylum Annelida (segmented worms and leeches) have a greenish respiratory pigment called chlorocruorin.
Did anyone know that some animals have blue blood, especially when it is exposed to oxygen? Can you guess what animals might have blue blood? Lobsters, crabs, pillbugs, shrimp, octopus, crayfish, scallops, barnacles, snails, small worms (except earthworms), clams, squid, slugs, mussels, horseshoe crabs, most spiders.
BATON ROUGE – Green blood is one of the most unusual characteristics in the animal kingdom, but it's the hallmark of a group of lizards in New Guinea. Prasinohaema are green-blooded skinks, or a type of lizard.
Family Channichthyidae has fishes that do not contain hemoglobin pigment in their blood. Hence their blood is white. As Hemoglobin is important for carrying oxygen in the body, but in the habitat of these fishes, the amount of oxygen present in cold water makes them devoid of Hemoglobin.
One group of segmented marine worms has pink blood. This is because the molecule that carries the oxygen is a type of blood pigment, known as hemerythrin, which is described as pink or purple.
The correct answer is Cockroach. The cockroach has white blood.
The short answer is ants have something similar to blood, but scientists call it “haemolymph”. It is yellowish or greenish. In vertebrates (animals with backbones such as humans, cats, dogs, snakes, birds and frogs) blood's main job is to move important things around the body.
In the case of many creatures, including spiders, social behaviour is driven by neurons in the brain. "One of the conditions for social animals is that they have a bigger brain size," Mikheyev says. "Not only do they need to store information about the physical environment, but also the social one."
Unlike most other invertebrates, spiders - like humans - have more centralised organs such as the heart and the brain.