The blood of an insect functions differently than the blood of a human. In humans, blood gets its red color from hemoglobin, which travels through blood vessels carrying oxygen from the lungs to the rest of the body.
Insect blood, however, does not carry gasses and has no hemoglobin. Instead, bugs have a system of tubes that transport gasses directly between their cells and the outside air.
In fact, insects don't even have blood vessels. Instead there is a hollow space inside their external skeleton in which their blood oozes around.
This cavity extends to the antennas, legs, and wing veins. The bug's heart, a long tube that stretches the length of its body, pushes the blood from the rear end of the insect on forward. Already a subscriber? Sign in. Thanks for reading Scientific American. Create your free account or Sign in to continue. See Subscription Options. Go Paperless with Digital. Rob DeSalle, Curator in the Division of Invertebrate Zoology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, offers this explanation: The major difference between insect blood and the blood of vertebrates, including humans, is that vertebrate blood contains red blood cells.
Get smart. Sign Up. Insects also have an open circulatory system instead of a closed one. This means that they don't have any arteries or veins, and instead their blood just flows more openly throughout their bodies. Insects don't have blood exactly like ours, but theirs does some of the same jobs, transporting things throughout their bodies.
Their blood moves nutrients, waste products, and hormones. They have a heart, but it is near their backs instead of near their front like ours. While our blood stays in tubes all the time, some of their blood squishes around in an open space called the hemocoel "blood space". Instead of using blood to move oxygen and carbon dioxide, their air tubes which are spread around their bodies take in oxygen and get rid of carbon dioxide. Blood can be different colors.
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