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In The Wolverine, with his healing suppressed, there should be bleeding when Logan pops his claws.

Why does he bleed from bullet wounds, but not his hands?

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    This is more likely an issue of trying to keep the rating down. Too much blood, or certain types of bleeding would likely push the rating closer to the R that fans want, but studios want to avoid.
    – phantom42
    Commented Aug 9, 2013 at 18:50
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    Related.
    – Beofett
    Commented Aug 9, 2013 at 19:19
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    I always suspected it had something to do with the sharpness of the blades, similar to how there is minimal bleeding from a scalpel cut (which wouldn't explain why there isn't any with his bone claws)
    – Monty129
    Commented Aug 9, 2013 at 21:37
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    I thought they just healed really quickly. After all, it's only a very small wound.
    – Reinstate Monica - Goodbye SE
    Commented Aug 12, 2013 at 13:48
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    @Wikis Me too - you should put that as an answer
    – PhilPursglove
    Commented Aug 12, 2013 at 16:34

5 Answers 5

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Per this answer:

Claws are extended through a silicon plug located in each knuckle cover by surgically-rearranged muscles. Silicon seals must be periodically replaced.

enter image description here

It's not a great answer, and there are some pretty clear differences between the claws on the trading card, and the claws as they appear in the movie, but its the best answer you're likely to find with some sort of canon authenticity.

If you're going for pure speculation, Paul D. Waite's answer is good. If the tissue covering the blades is thin, it would likely be fed blood through capillaries, and any bleeding would be minimal, whereas gunshots to the torso would quite possibly hit larger blood vessels.

Alternately, it is possible that, as part of his mutation, Logan has small opening in his skin that are normally closed off, but separate when the claws come out.

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Idea: under normal conditions, he’ll have a bit of blood around a gunshot wound whilst the healing factor does its work. It doesn’t prevent him from ever bleeding, it just prevents him from bleeding for long.

However, in the movies, we never see any blood when he pops his claws, not even the first time he did it as a child (if I remember correctly from X-Men Origins: Wolverine). So, as a mutant, it may well be that his body doesn’t have any blood vessels where his claws come out (or at least not enough to result in visible blood).

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    This supercut laughingsquid.com/… would tend to support this theory, at least from a movie canon point of view. There are one or two shots of the bone claws coming out bloodless.
    – JohnP
    Commented Aug 9, 2013 at 19:26
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    Can such a large area of the skin not contain any capillaries? I mean, if you jam a needle through any living skin, it should draw blood. Seeing as Wolverine doesn't scar (otherwise almost his entire body would be covered in them, and his joints would eventually become unusable), it can't just be a region of partially deadened non-vascularized tissue. So I would guess his capillaries in that area constrict when his claws are extended. This would slightly numb the area as well as reduce or even prevent bleeding (if the area heals fast enough).
    – Lèse majesté
    Commented Aug 10, 2013 at 2:02
  • @Lèsemajesté: ah yes (biology isn’t one of my strong points). See also @Beofett’s answer
    – Paul D. Waite
    Commented Aug 10, 2013 at 13:44
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The blades make small wounds (very thin) so I think these wounds would heal very quickly (a fraction of a second). Therefore, there would simply be no time for the wounds to bleed.

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  • In the scenario shown in The Wolverine, his healing is suppressed. I like Beofett's last sentence as best answer. I add that like a feline, Logan has claws which retract and extend as a natural feature of his physical character, adamantium or not.
    – Ihor Sypko
    Commented Sep 4, 2013 at 19:54
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I remember one cartoon episode with a mutant child being able to suppress powers, where wolverine seems to endure pain upon retracting his claws. So at least, with his healing suppressed, retracting/popping his claws should hurt him (but then again, characters are frequently reimagined...)

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    In the movie canon, Wolverine remarks that it hurts every time he pops his claws. Pain was never the question here; the blood is.
    – phantom42
    Commented Aug 12, 2013 at 14:43
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Like a lot of things in comics, I believe the exact workings for Wolverine's claws have changed over the years, but I distinctly remember one storyline in which Rogue and Wolverine are in Genosha and have lost their powers. They are on a train, Wolverine pops his claws (or maybe just one) in order to cut the lock off the train door, and he starts bleeding. Rogue is surprised, and Wolverine says something along the lines of "My healing factor is gone, it normally closes the wounds made by my claws as soon as they're made". So at least in that storyline, he doesn't have silicone seals or anything, the claws break his skin and his healing factor normally stops the bleeding instantly.

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  • Can you site which issue this is from?
    – Monty129
    Commented Aug 16, 2014 at 17:52
  • Not exactly, I think it was during the X-Tinction Agenda storyline. So around issue 270 of Uncanny X-Men.
    – Dan C
    Commented Aug 16, 2014 at 18:10

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