Hey! Big octopus fan here, I found your blog via the dissection tag on tumblr. I'm super psyched to see a blog like this — I'm going to be following religiously, trust me! You said in your intro video it was cool to ask questions, so I had one if you don't mind. It's not really about your work, just something I've kind of wondered about RE: octopuses. How much octopuses bleed? Do they bleed very much if their legs get cut off? Common sense tells me "duh, of course they must, right?" but whenever I see octopus dissection images there never seems to be any visible blood, which had me getting curious.
Good luck with your project, I'm very excited to see how things progress.
Awesome! I'm glad you found me, and that this is interesting to you!
And I'll be happy to tell you as much as I can about octopus blood. Their blood has actually evolved to be less efficient than ours, because they use hemocyanin. Most vertebrates have hemoglobin, which has an iron ion in the center of the molecule. In organisms with hemocyanin, a copper ion replaces the iron. This not only makes the blood blue-ish rather than red, it also gives the blood different properties. I believe these properties may have to do with the fact that no, we didn't see any blood. From the four dissections we did, there wasn't any bleeding or anything. To be honest, they just looked slimy inside. So its a totally valid question! I hadn't thought of it until now, but they really don't bleed at all. You can disrupt the ink sac and get ink all over the organs if you're not careful, but no, they really don't bleed at all. Hope that helps!
That's so fascinating! Presumably there must be bloodflow around the body to facilitate oxygenisation, so that's really strange that there would be no visible blood upon dissection. I'm very curious as to why that might be, but if octopuses simply don't bleed/much that might explain how they don't just bleed out in the water when they lose a limb, I guess? Thank you for your reply!
Hey! Big octopus fan here, I found your blog via the dissection tag on tumblr. I'm super psyched to see a blog like this — I'm going to be following religiously, trust me! You said in your intro video it was cool to ask questions, so I had one if you don't mind. It's not really about your work, just something I've kind of wondered about RE: octopuses. How much octopuses bleed? Do they bleed very much if their legs get cut off? Common sense tells me "duh, of course they must, right?" but whenever I see octopus dissection images there never seems to be any visible blood, which had me getting curious.
ReplyDeleteGood luck with your project, I'm very excited to see how things progress.
Awesome! I'm glad you found me, and that this is interesting to you!
ReplyDeleteAnd I'll be happy to tell you as much as I can about octopus blood. Their blood has actually evolved to be less efficient than ours, because they use hemocyanin. Most vertebrates have hemoglobin, which has an iron ion in the center of the molecule. In organisms with hemocyanin, a copper ion replaces the iron. This not only makes the blood blue-ish rather than red, it also gives the blood different properties. I believe these properties may have to do with the fact that no, we didn't see any blood. From the four dissections we did, there wasn't any bleeding or anything. To be honest, they just looked slimy inside. So its a totally valid question! I hadn't thought of it until now, but they really don't bleed at all. You can disrupt the ink sac and get ink all over the organs if you're not careful, but no, they really don't bleed at all.
Hope that helps!
That's so fascinating! Presumably there must be bloodflow around the body to facilitate oxygenisation, so that's really strange that there would be no visible blood upon dissection. I'm very curious as to why that might be, but if octopuses simply don't bleed/much that might explain how they don't just bleed out in the water when they lose a limb, I guess? Thank you for your reply!
Delete