Subject: I'm way over my head trying to talk anything chemistry.
Author:
Posted on: 2014-11-17 19:16:00 UTC

But I can at least contribute a teensy bit of biology to this conversation.

Horseshoe crabs which are not stingrays have that copper (as hemocyanin) in their blood for carrying oxygen. However, their blood is actually closer in color to the "+2" box under Copper in that table you linked, and then, only in large quantities. Individual drops looks more like cloudy water:

This point in this video has examples of both colorings.

(I realize responding to a post where someone states they're color-blind by posting a video and saying LOOK THE COLORS is kind of horrible, so I apologize for that.)

(And yes, I am super-displeased by how that blood is collected. I recognize the incredible medical value of their blood, and I would never deprive anyone in need of care of the products of that research, but damn there has got to be a more comfortable way for the horseshoes for sit through that.)

So something in horseshoe crab blood besides the copper in the hemocyanin affects/determines the coloring. Again, I couldn't say what, because my chemistry (and medical) knowledge is quite poor. So Andalite blood could also use a copper-based molecular structure for oxygen transport (Do they use oxygen? They survive in Earth's atmosphere, but oxygen is a minority there, so it's not definitely what Ax was inhaling all those years.), but have other factors that darken the color of their blood. Or, not use copper at all and have other elements in their bloodstream entirely.

—doctorlit waits for the inevitable debunking of everything he just said as being completely out-of-line with modern chemical knowledge.

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