Rainbow of Blood

(3 Minute Read. 26Jun2024)

What color is blood?

Most would answer, “Red.” Star Trek aficionados might answer, “Green,” thinking of the Vulcan character Mr. Spock.

Both answers are actually correct! There are animals with green blood. And there are even more colors of blood among God’s creatures. In addition to red blood and green blood, the Great Creator made creatures with orange, yellow, blue, purple, and clear blood.

Blood is a fluid that circulates through creatures transporting vital nutrients to the cells and carrying metabolic waste products away from the cells.

Red Blood

Vertebrates have red blood due to the presence of the oxygen-carrying protein hemoglobin. Each hemoglobin molecule has four heme groups which are iron-containing molecules that can bind to one oxygen molecule.

One drop of human blood has about 250 million red blood cells, and each red blood cell has about 250 million hemoglobin molecules. All that iron is what makes the blood so red.

Blue-tongued Skink

Green Blood

Skinks are a type of lizard. Those in the genus Prasinohaema have green blood. This is due to a high concentration of the green bile pigment biliverdin in their blood. Skinks have normal red blood cells with hemoglobin, but the much greater amount of green biliverdin makes their blood green.

Some marine segmented worms also have green blood. Chlorocruorin is the oxygen-carrying protein in their blood, and it is green.

Yellow Blood

Some beetles, sea cucumbers, and sea squirts have yellowish blood due to the protein vanabin. Scientists don’t yet know its function.

Blue Blood

Clams, lobsters, horseshoe crabs, octopuses, squids, snails, slugs, and spiders have blue blood. The oxygen-carrying protein in their blood is hemocyanin instead of hemoglobin. Hemocyanin has two copper atoms that carry one oxygen molecule. The copper atoms turn blue when bound to oxygen giving these creatures blue blood.

Purple Blood

Hemerythrin is the oxygen-carrying protein in the blood of brachiopods (mollusk-like invertebrates) and some marine worms. It is purple when oxygenated.

Clear Blood

Insects have clear blood called hemolymph. This is the liquid that circulates throughout the insect body delivering nutrients and removing waste products. But hemolymph does not have an oxygen-carrying protein. Instead of lungs, insects have a network of tiny airways that deliver air throughout the body directly from the atmosphere.

Orange Blood

Female cockroaches have orange blood due to the presence of vitellogenin, an orange protein, in the clear hemolymph. Yolk proteins in cockroach eggs use vitellogenin.

Circulation of blood through the human heart

Questions about Blood

Why do all these different colors and types of blood exist? Did they really all evolve by random chance? Or were they purposefully designed by the Creator?

Hemoglobin and the other oxygen-carrying proteins in colored bloods are extremely complex. And the process of manufacturing them in living tissue is very complicated. How could this be accomplished by an evolutionary process over millions of years when functioning blood is needed for life from its beginning?

For the blood to accomplish its mission, it needs the heart to pump it around the body through an intricate network of blood vessels. Which came first, the blood or the vessels or the heart? Don’t all three have to be fully functional from the start?

The circulatory system and the respiratory system are interdependent. The respiratory system depends on the heart circulating blood throughout the body to deliver oxygen and remove carbon dioxide. The heart needs oxygenated blood to live and pump. Each system needs the other. Neither system can function properly without the other. Both systems need to be fully functional at the same time from the beginning for life to exist.

The only logical answer to these questions is that the Great Creator put life and its systems together in the beginning. There was no gradual evolutionary development of systems.

The Most Important Blood

You might think that the most important blood in the universe is what flows through your own veins and arteries. But that is not true.

The most important blood was spilled two millennia ago in an unjust Roman execution. The reason this blood is so important and valuable is that its atoning sacrifice rescues men from eternal death.
But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him. (Romans 5:8-9)
In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace. (Ephesians 1:7)
But if we walk in the Light as He Himself is in the Light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin. (1 John 1:7)

Questions to Ponder

1. Have you entrusted yourself to “the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish to God” to “cleanse your conscience”? (Hebrews 9:14)
2. When the Hebrews were liberated from Egyptian slavery, how did the doorpost blood-daubing foreshadow your own deliverance from sin’s bondage? (Exodus 12:5-7,13)

Share your thoughts on these questions in the comments below. It could encourage or help another reader.

For Christ and His Kingdom.
Alere Flammam Veritatis.
Soli Deo Gloria.

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©William T. Pelletier, Ph.D.
“contending earnestly for the faith”
“destroying speculations against the knowledge of God”
“for the defense of the gospel”
(Jude 1:3; 2 Cor 10:5; Phil 1:16)
Wednesday, June 26, 2024 A.D.

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters. (Genesis 1:1-2)

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