Whenever I see this image I always wonder 2 things:
What makes hemoglobin more efficient?
Why do we even need these fancy molecules to transport oxygen? Can't we produce some kind of biological ampule that holds some pure O2 for consumption by the various processes that need it? We have dedicated organelle structures for similar tasks (i.e. mitochondria)
It's sensitive to pH, so it absorbs oxygen more readily in the lungs, and releases it slightly more near tissues that need it, as they have co2 which slightly acidifies the blood in solution (h2co3).
It's effective and well tuned for our biology, it doesn't bond strongly, and is well suited for the air-blood interface, unlike others that often favor water-blood or water-the fluid worms use instead.
Many of the comments being "penis worms!", but no one is asking about that Red blood is only in the "majority of vertebrates" leaves me wondering which vertebrates have what other colour(s) of blood.
Edit: I have been told that it's "Crocodile Icefish" (10 species of) and colourless.
I knew about the hemocyanin because I was trying to figure out if one of the characters in my tentacle porn should have blue blood but decided against it. Cool to learn about the others too though.
Nah. Weirdly enough it was the character with the arthropod features I was investigating the concept for but now I wonder if I should've done that for the illithid so I might look into that. It was relevant to the other character because the actual arthropod features (wings) are missing by the time of the story so it was going to be one of the "hints" that they had her labeled as the wrong species but first of all it just didn't fit creatively, it was much too overt to the extent it didn't even make logical sense for the mixup to happen but also as you see here the science doesn't follow either it's only spiders and the like that have it, not dragonflies.