GREEN BLOOD, BLUE BLOOD, CLEAR BLOOD, YELLOW BLOOD, PURPLE BLOOD
(Friday Church News Notes, June 1, 2018, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143)
The great Creator made a bewildering variety of creatures with all sorts of life systems to fit their divine purpose and environment. Most animals with bones have RED BLOOD cells composed of hemoglobin, a biomolecule containing iron that binds with oxygen and is responsible for the red color. The cells are like little sacks of hemoglobin. New ones are manufactured in the bone marrow at the rate of about 2.4 million per second! They circulate through the body about once per minute for 100-120 days, performing their amazing, life-giving work of transporting oxygen from the lungs, then their components are efficiently recycled. The red blood cell is perfectly designed by shape to squeeze through the body’s tiny capillaries. The horseshoe crab, some mollusks, octopuses and squid have BLUE BLOOD due to the fact that their blood uses a different protein, hemocyanin, to bind oxygen. It uses an atom of copper, rather than of iron, for the process, which turns blue when oxygenated. The Prasinohaema skink, a lizard in New Guinea, has GREEN BLOOD. The green color comes from a poison called biliverdin, which is a bi-product of the recycling of red blood cells. Biliverdin, therefore, exists in humans, but the liver filters it out. In case of liver failure, even trace amounts of biliverdin causes jaundice. The amount of biliverdin in the New Guinea lizards would be fatal to a human, but the little lizards thrive on their toxic green blood. The ocellated icefish has CLEAR BLOOD. This odd little fish, which has no scales, lives at a depth of one kilometer (.62 miles) in the cold sea off Antarctica. Scientists don’t know how the fish survives without hemoglobin, but they speculate that its “unusually large heart might help move oxygen through its body using blood plasma instead of hemoglobin” (“Why Does This Fish Have Gin-Clear Blood?” Live Science, Apr. 5, 2013). Many insects have YELLOW BLOOD. The blood carries nutrients and hormones to their cells, but it doesn’t transport oxygen and doesn’t need hemoglobin. The oxygen is transported by a system of tubes directly between the outside air and the cells. The yellow (or green) color of insect blood comes from the pigments of the plants it eats (“Why Is Insect Blood Green or Yellow?” May 30, 2013, IndianaPublicMedia.org). In the sea squirt and sea cucumber, the yellow blood is caused by the concentration of the chemical vanabin. Sea squirts and brachiopods and some types of marine worms have PURPLE BLOOD due to the protein hemerytherin, that transports oxygen instead of hemoglobin. Because of the translucent skin of the peanut worm, its purple blood can be seen without cutting them open. While the evolutionary scientist tries in vain to figure out how such things evolved, the Bible believer sees the handiwork of an Almighty God.