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6 Strangest Hearts in the Animal

Kingdom
by Laura Geggel, Staff Writer | February 13, 2015 08:47am ET

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Hearts have become iconic symbols of Valentine's Day, but when it

comes to hearts in the real world, one size doesn't fit all particularly in
the animal kingdom. T he human heart beats about 72 times a minute, but
in that same time, a hibernating groundhog's heart beats just five times
and a hummingbird's heart reaches 1,260 beats per minute during flight.
T he human heart weighs about 0.6 pounds (0.3 kilograms), but a giraffe's
weighs about 26 pounds (12 kg), since the organ needs to be powerful
enough to pump blood up the animal's long neck. Here are some other
creatures with strange hearts.
T hree-chambered f rog s

Mammals and birds have four-chambered hearts, but frogs have just
three, with two atria and one ventricle, said Daniel Mulcahy, a research
collaborator of vertebrate zoology who specializes in amphibians and
reptiles at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.

In general, the heart takes deoxygenated blood from the body, sends it to
the lungs to get oxygen, and pumps it through the body to oxygenate the
organs, he said. In humans, the four-chambered heart keeps oxygenated

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blood and deoxygenated blood in separate chambers. But in frogs,

grooves called trabeculae keep the oxygenated blood separate from the
deoxygenated blood in its one ventricle.
Frogs can get oxygen not only from their lungs, but also from their skin,
Mulcahy said. T he frog's heart takes advantage of this evolutionary quirk.
As deoxygenated blood comes into the right atrium, it goes into the
ventricle and out to the lungs and skin to get oxygen.
T he oxygenated blood comes back to the heart through the left atrium,
then into the ventricle and out to the major organs, Mulcahy said.
Mulcahy snapped this photo of a plains spadefoot toad (Spea
bombifrons). "We have a saying," he said, that "not all frogs are toads,
but all toads are frogs." (Photo credit: Daniel Mulcahy)
A whale of a heart

"It is the size of a small car and has been weighed at about 950 pounds
[430 kg]," said James Mead, a curator emeritus of marine mammals in the
department of vertebrate zoology at the Smithsonian Institution.T he blue
whale's heart is the largest of all the animals living today. Like other
mammals, it has four chambers.
T he organ is responsible for supplying blood to an animal the size of two
school buses, said Nikki Vollmer, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration (NOAA) and National Research Council postdoctoral fellow
at the National Systematics Lab at the Smithsonian.
"T he walls of the aorta, the main artery, can be as thick as an iPhone 6
Plus is long," Vollmer told Live Science. "T hat is a thick-walled blood
vessel!" (Photo credit: AMNH | D. Finnin)
T hree hearts f or cephalopods

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T here's nothing half-hearted about cephalopods. T hese tentacular

marine creatures, including the octopus, squid and cuttlefish, have three
hearts apiece.
T wo brachial hearts on either side of the cephalopod's body oxygenate
blood by pumping it through the blood vessels of the gills, and the
systemic heart in the center of the body pumps oxygenated blood from
the gills through the rest of the organism, said Michael Vecchione,
director of the NOAA National Systematics Laboratory at the Smithsonian
and a curator of cephalopods at the National Museum of Natural History.
Cephalopods are also literally blue-blooded because they have copper in
their blood. Human blood is red because of the iron in hemoglobin. "Just
like rust is red, the iron in our hemoglobin is red when it's oxygenated,"
Vecchione said. But in cephalopods, oxygenated blood turns blue.
(T aonius borealis squid, Photo credit: Michael Vecchione)
La cucaracha

Like other insects, the cockroach has an open circulatory system,

meaning its blood doesn't fill blood vessels. Instead, the blood flows
through a single structure with 12 to 13 chambers, said Don Moore III, a
senior scientist at the Smithsonian's National Zoo.

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T he dorsal sinus, located on the top of the cockroach, helps to send

oxygenated blood to each chamber of the heart. But the heart isn't there
to move around oxygenated blood, Moore said.
"Roaches and other insects breathe through spiracles [surface openings]
in the bodies instead of lungs, so the blood doesnt need to carry oxygen
from one place to another," Moore said.
Instead, the blood, called hemolymph, carries nutrients and is white or
yellow, he said. T he heart doesn't beat by itself, either. Muscles in the
cavity expand and contract to help the heart send hemolymph to the rest
of the body.
T he heart is often smaller in wingless cockroaches than in flying ones,
Moore said. T he cockroach's heart also beats at about the same rate as
a human heart, he added. (Photo Credit: skynetphoto |
Shutterstock.com)
False hearts

T he earthworm can't take heart, because it doesn't have one. Instead,

the worm has five pseudohearts that wrap around its esophagus. T hese
pseudohearts don't pump blood, but rather squeeze vessels to help
circulate blood throughout the worm's body, Moore said.
It also doesn't have lungs, but absorbs oxygen through its moist skin.
"Air trapped in the soil, or aboveground after a rain when worms can stay
moist, dissolves in the skin mucous, and the oxygen is drawn into the cells
and blood system where it is pumped around the body," Moore said.
Earthworms have red blood that contains hemoglobin, the protein that
carries oxygen, but unlike people they have an open circulatory system.
"So the hemoglobin just kind of floats among the rest of the fluids,"
Moore said. (Photo credit: alexsvirid | Shutterstock.com)
Underwater hearts

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If a zebrafish has a broken heart, it can simply regrow one. A study

published in 2002 in the journal Science found that zebrafish can fully
regenerate heart muscle just two months after 20 percent of their heart
muscle is damaged.
Humans can regenerate their liver, and amphibians and some lizards can
regenerate their tails, but the zebrafish's regenerative abilities make it a
prime model to study heart growth, Moore said.
However, fish have unique hearts. T hey have one atrium and one
ventricle, but they also have two structures that aren't seen in humans.
T he "sinus venosus" is a sac that sits before the atrium and the "bulbus
arteriosus" is a tube located just after the ventricle.
As in other animals, the heart drives blood throughout the body.
Deoxygenated blood enters the sinus venosus and flows into the atrium,
Moore said. T he atrium then pumps the blood into the ventricle.
T he ventricle has thicker, more muscular walls, and pumps the blood into
the bulbus arteriosus. T he bulbus arteriosus regulates the pressure of the
blood as it flows through the capillaries surrounding the fishs gills. It is in
the gills where there is oxygen exchange across cell membranes and into
the blood, Moore said.
But why does the fish need the bulbus arteriosus to regulate blood
pressure?
"Because the gills are delicate and thin-walled any fisherman knows this
and can be damaged if the blood pressure is too high," Moore said.
"T he bulbous arteriosus itself is apparently a chamber with very elastic
components compared to the muscular nature of the ventricle." (Photo
credit: Annette Shaff | Shutterstock.com)

Follow Laura Geggel on T witter @LauraGeggel. Follow Live Science

@livescience, Facebook & Google+.

Editor's Recommendations
T op 10 Amazing Facts About Your Heart
Pictures: Cute and Colorful Frog Images
Photos: Amazing T ech Inspired by the Octopus

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Author Bio
Laura Geggel

As a staff writer for Live Science, Laura Geggel covers general science, including
the environment and amazing animals. She has written for the Simons
Foundation, Scholastic, Popular Science and The New York Times. Laura grew
up in Seattle and studied English literature and psychology at Washington
University in St. Louis before completing her graduate degree in science writing
at NYU. When not writing, you'll find Laura playing Ultimate Frisbee, biking or
browsing local green markets. Follow Laura on Google+.
Laura Geg g el on

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