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].
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.
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.
The term "essential minerals" refers to minerals (elemental rather than organic chemical compounds) required for life. For humans, those include five major minerals: calcium, phosphorus, potassium, sodium, and magnesium, and an additional nine "trace elements": iron, chlorine, cobalt, copper, zinc, manganese, molybdenum, iodine, and selenium.
Dose is critical. Whilst too little causes deficiency syndromes, too much of these compounds may also be harmful. Note that even excessive water consumption can be deadly.
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.
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?
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.
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.
This website manages to both hijack the back button and not show a single picture of any of the blood that the entire article is about. Fuck this website.
"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."
To be similarly pedantic, I think you may be looking for 'pedant' (a person concerned with fine detail) rather than 'pendant' (a hanging piece of jewellery or a hanging lamp) :)
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.
The text seems fine. If it was written by an AI, it’s a very good one. I find it sad that a name as big as “how stuff works” has to resort to cramming their pages full of ads because there is no other realistic way to make money.
0: https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/national/outreach-and-educati...