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The red colour is caused by a chemical known as a porphyrin which actually contains the iron atom in haemoglobin. The name porphyrin comes from the Greek for purple. There are lots of different kinds of haemoglobin depending on which species you belong to, but all have a similar structure of protein molecules and iron containing porphyrin molecules. Oh I forgot, the porphyrin molecule in haemoglobin is called ha em or heme, depends on where you come from. If you are interested some animals like octopus and squid have copper instead of iron in their oxygen carrying molecules.

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15y ago

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