Absolutely incredible!

Can you guess how big a blue whale’s heart is?

What an intriguing creature a blue whale is! A blue whale can measure over 100 ft in length and can weigh over of 40,000 pounds. Despite their gigantic size, they can swim at over 8km/h, and easily reach speeds of over 30km/h. What is even more fascinating is that these massive creatures feed on very small marine creatures. They eat small shrimp like animals called krill. We all know that the blue whale is the largest animal to have ever lived but just how huge is its heart?

While a human heart weighs about 10 ounces, you will be surprised to know that a blue whale’s heart can weigh about 400 pounds! To give you a simpler idea, the latter’s heart weighs approximately 640 times more than the human heart. If you wish to compare it with other animals, then how about we look at the largest terrestrial creature on Earth, the African elephant? Their heart comes to be around 30 pounds so it is safe to say that the blue whale’s heart weighs 14 times more than the African elephant’s.

If you are wondering about the size of a blue whale’s heart, then you will be surprised to know that it is about 5 feet in length, 4 feet in width, and 5 feet in height. So, even though the heart makes up for just 1 percent of the whale’s overall body weight, it is still the biggest on Earth. In terms of its size, you can say it is almost as big as a bumper car!

When Stanford University’s Jeremy Goldbogen attached a heart monitor to a blue whale at sea, it was revealed that the heart rate often had extreme rhythms. While it came down to just 2 beats a minute while the creature was deep diving, it rose rapidly as the creature climbed back to the surface.

So, the next time you go whale watching and get awed by the beautiful creature’s size, remember that there is an incredibly stunning heart beating inside it.