Communities

Writing
Writing
Codidact Meta
Codidact Meta
The Great Outdoors
The Great Outdoors
Photography & Video
Photography & Video
Scientific Speculation
Scientific Speculation
Cooking
Cooking
Electrical Engineering
Electrical Engineering
Judaism
Judaism
Languages & Linguistics
Languages & Linguistics
Software Development
Software Development
Mathematics
Mathematics
Christianity
Christianity
Code Golf
Code Golf
Music
Music
Physics
Physics
Linux Systems
Linux Systems
Power Users
Power Users
Tabletop RPGs
Tabletop RPGs
Community Proposals
Community Proposals
tag:snake search within a tag
answers:0 unanswered questions
user:xxxx search by author id
score:0.5 posts with 0.5+ score
"snake oil" exact phrase
votes:4 posts with 4+ votes
created:<1w created < 1 week ago
post_type:xxxx type of post
Search help
Notifications
Mark all as read See all your notifications »
Q&A

Is the vibrancy of the color of blood visibly affected by blood cell content?

+0
−0

Part of this story I'm writing involves a human subspecies who are adapted to extremely high altitudes -- as high or higher than our real world's Tibetan population, let's say. I've done research that indicates that the Tibetan adaptation to high altitudes in part involves either a decreased red blood cell count or a dramatically reduced amount of hemoglobin. I'm not sure if those terms are synonymous (I'm guessing they are), but sources agree on it being related to the EPAS1 gene. Anyways, I'm thinking about using the same mechanism for this population, although since they live higher up, and they've had a longer time to adapt, I assume they would have a proportionately more intense version of the Tibetan adaptations.

What I want to know is whether a significantly reduced red blood cell count, across this population, would be visibly discernible in their blood to the unaided eye, and thus what color their blood would be relative to lowlander red blood. Would it be less vibrantly red? More so? I initially wanted blood as vibrant as red paint, but I'm trying to be realistic.

An absence of sources detailing Tibetans having differently colored blood, to me, points to them not having differently colored blood. And I suspect blood color would vary more with degree of oxygenation than it would with cell count.

History
Why does this post require attention from curators or moderators?
You might want to add some details to your flag.
Why should this post be closed?

This post was sourced from https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/19764. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

0 comment threads

0 answers

Sign up to answer this question »