• Question: Why Is A Giraffe's Tounge Blue?

    Asked by katnisseverdeen to Adam, Catherine, Karen, Leila, Nazim on 14 Mar 2012.
    • Photo: Leila Battison

      Leila Battison answered on 14 Mar 2012:

      A giraffe’s tongue looks blue/black because it doesn’t have much blood in it, and it is the blood under the surface that makes our skin pink and our tongue red. Giraffes eat lots of prickly and thorny plants, so if their tongues had as much blood in them as ours, they would bleed really badly. Clever!

    • Photo: Adam Stevens

      Adam Stevens answered on 14 Mar 2012:

      What she said ^

    • Photo: Nazim Bharmal

      Nazim Bharmal answered on 21 Mar 2012:

      Ah, a good answer from Leila. We have blue-ish blood in our veins for a different reason: I would have said because the oxygen has been used up, but it turns out that it is a psychological thing, because the blood in veins is actually maroon but because of some physics, it /looks/ blue to our eyes,

      http://scienceblogs.com/scientificactivist/2008/04/why_are_veins_blue.php

      A bit complicated, but it is all to do where the veins are and you need both Biology /and/ Physics to explain it.

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