Your heart is an amazing organ. It will beat about 115,000 times each day, and pumps about 2,000 gallons of blood every day. The network of arteries, veins and capillaries in the circulatory system is incredibly efficient. The heart pumps blood at speed, and it can can travel through the whole system in just 60 seconds. It can even continue beating when it’s disconnected from the body. The heart can even create enough pressure to squirt blood up to 9 metres in distance.
The size and weight of hearts can vary hugely between different organisms, the fairy fly (a type of wasp) has the smallest heart – their whole bodies are less than 0.2 mm long. Compare this to a whale’s heart – the largest heart of any mammal, which is about 5 feet long!! The giraffe has a lopsided heart, with their left ventricle being much thicker than the right. This is because the left side has to get blood up the giraffe’s long neck to reach their brain.
If you are studying GCSE Science, you need to understand the structure of the heart, and be able to describe the route blood travels through the heart. For help with this – try our new guide “How to work with the Circulatory System”. It includes questions for you to try, and answers to check your understanding.
Click on the picture below to see the guide.
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