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. It can even continue beating when it’s disconnected from the body. 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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