so vulcans have copper based blood. i googled it and it turns out there are a few species on earth that have copper based blood, and the main oxygen-carrying protein in their blood is hemocyanin. let’s assume that vulcans have the same protein in their blood.
before i go a disclaimer: i am not a professional scientist. i am reading a wikipedia article. this is likely to be inaccurate however i welcome corrections to it. also if i had enough money to buy the resources listed at the bottom of the wikipedia article to make this more accurate, i would. but its like $40 for one article so no.
so first and foremost i would like to address the whole “vulcans have green blood” thing star trek has going on. so in humans, our blood is red. this is because of our haemoglobin- a protein that primarily carries oxygen around our body. in vulcans, assuming they are like the earth creatures with copper based blood, they have hemocyanin, which on earth does the same thing as haemoglobin, but less efficiently. however in my research, it doesn’t make blood green. In fact, it’s clear. one wikipedia article states that “oxygenation causes a color change between the colorless Cu(I) deoxygenated form and the blue Cu(II) oxygenated form.” so what should happen for vulcans is their heart should have clear blood pumping into it (how fucking metal is that lmao) and then have blue blood pumping out of it. so really, they should look like humans that haven’t had their heart pumping in a few days- blue. their lips should be blue-ish and when they blush, they should blush blue.
secondly, based on earth animals and science, they should have descended from arthropods, not cats. hemocyanin has only been found in arthropods (which can include insects, crustaceans, arachnids and myriapods). so they should have an exoskeleton. they shouldnt look human; if they keep their humanoid form they should have their skeleton on the outside (spooky). keeping with the arthropods as ancestors theme, they should have their skeleton be made of chitin. you know when those bugs shed their skin and you find the leftover shell on trees and shit? thats chitin. vulcans skin should look and feel like that. who knows? maybe they should molt it as well.
now for my third point i’d like to point out that it is possible for vulcans to live in the desert with hemocyanin, as it’s been documented that spiders and scorpions live in the heat and their main oxygen-carrier is hemocyanin. however, vulcans are a lot bigger than spiders and scorpions. haemoglobin (our blood protein) is a lot more efficient in heat, and a lot less efficient in cold areas with minimal oxygen (star trek has stated that planet vulcan has a less oxygen dense atmosphere than earth- “Vulcan had a considerably higher gravity, thinner atmosphere, and higher temperatures than Earth”). But you know what is way more efficient in environments with low oxygen and cold weather? hemocyanin. so really, to be the most biologically fit, vulcans should live in the cold, possibly in or around water, like their earth buddies crustaceans, because in the heat they probably are going to suffer oxygen deprivation due to their large size.
now, for my final little spiel about vulcans and their cool blood, i would like to draw your attention to cancer. now scientists have used blood from molluscs that contain hemocyanin and given it to some mice, and after the mice had this cool new blood in their system, scientists were like “bro! guess what! you get a brand new bladder tumour, courtesy of us!! hope the blood works haha.” luckily the mice with the blood from those specific molluscs showed a greater immunity* to the bladder tumours the scientists introduced. they didnt have as much growth, they didnt have so much toxic shit in their bodies as a side effect, and they in general survived longer. so what i’m saying is not only would vulcans probably be less likely to develop cancer, they could potentially help us humans after first contact find a viable treatment and cure to it (as long as they don’t think of the prime directive beforehand ahaha).
*look under the anticancer effects subheading
well i hoped you enjoyed my little post about the science behind the vulcans! if you know any better resources (that are free) please feel free to add your comments/links to the resources. just to quickly sum up: vulcans should have clear/blue blood, have super spooky skeletons on the outside of their bodies, live in cold, watery environments, and have the potential to cure cancer.
I didn’t find the post it belonged to, but I found the picture from google.
It appears there is another chemical composition that does create green blood (chlorocruorin). I’m not sure how inclusive the information on this post is but it would suggest vulcans have worms in their ancestry 😂
As you can see, the color of the pigment isn’t really dependent on the metal it’s based on. Iron based pigments can be red, green or violet. The color of a pigment is determined mostly by the electrons in double bonds and if they are conjugated or not. (conjugated means double bonds alternating with single bonds)
So while we have copper based blood which is blue on earth, it’s possible that Vulcans use copper in a completly different molecule which might be green and have better properties under high temperatures.
But I love the discussion here because blood is seriously amazing. And also because I thought the same about vulcans once haemocyanine came up in lectures.
if vulcans have worms in their ancestry they could have a distant relation to the symbionts. that’d be a cool thing to investigate in a trek series: how related everyone is. there’s a theory star trek uses that basically says that these humanoids went and put their dna on all planets in the galaxy so we’re all generally humanoid-ish due to their influence on the natural evolution of the different species. so maybe some species are more closely related due to less time to diverge? so vulcans could be related more to symbionts than klingons because the klingon homeworld didnt get the universal dna until later or at least at a different time to vulcans and symbionts? ahh i just really want to explore the science behind everything in the star trek universe. hopefully we meet aliens someday soon so i can do it in real life haha.
Thanks, now I’m nearly as angry at Star Trek cladistics as I am about fungal ones.