Fun facts about blood.

We're always interested to find out some fun facts about blood. How many of these did you know?

1. The word "blood" appears at least once in every play by Shakespeare. 

2. Not every animal has red blood. Spiders, lobsters and snails have blue blood due to the presence of the protein haemocyanin which contains copper.

3. The amount of blood in a pregnant woman's body will have increased by 50% by the 20th week of pregnancy. 

4. Our blood contains around 0.2 milligrams of gold.

5. Some Japanese people believe that blood type is an indicator of a person’s personality. There are even novelty goods themed after blood types.

6. Nothing is left to chance for the President of the United States. The Presidential car stores the President's blood type in the boot of the car just in case of emergencies.  

7. Research has shown that mosquitoes prefer blood type O. It would take 1,200,000 mosquitoes, each sucking once, to totally drain a human of blood.

8. Larger animals have slower heart rates than smaller animals. This means that the blood in their body takes longer to circulate around. For example, a blue whale’s heart only beats 5 times per minute while humans beat closer to 75 per minute.

9. There has been an example of blood becoming a dark green colour. Surgeons operating on a 42-year-old Canadian man got a shock when they discovered dark green blood coursing through his arteries, like Star Trek‘s Mr Spock. It's thought this was caused by of a type of migraine medication.

10. Ancient Egyptians believed that wine was the blood of people who dared to battle against Gods. The reason why they believed this is that drinking wine temporarily made people crazy and drove them out of their senses. This is precisely why ancient Egyptians avoided drinking wine.