On average most blue whales grow to be around 70 – 90 ft in length, weigh around 100 – 150 tons.
In order to get blood through the blue whales large body it has massive arteries, which pump blood through the heart and into its major vital organs.
The arteries are so large in fact that a full size human could swim through them.
The aorta alone measures in at over 9 inches!
The blue whales heart can weigh in excess of 1,300 lbs.
In terms of size the blue whales heart is about the size of a small car.
At a rate of 8 – 10 beats per minute the blue whale’s heartbeat can be heard from over 2 miles away.
In comparison to a blue whale a dolphins heart has a heart rate of 35 – 45 beats per minute and a humans heart has an average heart rate of around 60 – 80 beats per minute.
When comparing the heart of a human to the heart of a blue whale the average size of a humans heart is about the same size as that individuals fist and weighs less than a pound in most healthy adults, while a blue whales heart is comparable to a Volkswagen beetle in terms of size.
Big hearted whale.
ReplyDeleteImpressive numbers, indeed. But, Triple Crown winner Secretariat had a heart that weighed three times the amount of your average horse. That supercharger helped to propel him along at a 25 ft. stride to set records in every race he won. In the '73 Derby win his times for each quarter mile was quicker than the last. This meant that he was still accelerating at the finish of the race. When he past away at age 19, a necropsy was performed and his heart was estimated to weigh between 24-26 lbs. He weighed in at 1155 lbs. at the start of the Triple Crown series in 1973. Mathematically, his ratio of heart size to that of the whale was 5x greater than the blue. Now, that's impressive ..........
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