World's biggest heart: 180kg of blue whale

Many people have believed that the heart of a blue whale, the largest animal known to have lived on Earth, would be the size of a car.

Some researchers believed its aorta was so large that humans could swim through it.

Because blue whales are rare, scientists could not study the heart in detail.

In May last year, a dead blue whale, nicknamed ‘Lollipop’, washed ashore in Newfoundland, Canada, giving scientists a chance to study the heart in detail for the first time.

The Royal Ontario Museum (ROM), the largest museum of natural history and world cultures in Canada, took charge of the study.

According to the museum, the 23.3 meter creature would have been crushed by unusually thick ice sheets or drowned while trapped under the ice.

The heart weighed about 180kg, as much as a large tractor tire, and took four people to lift it.

Researchers at the museum believe it pumped 58 gallons of blood through the whale’s body. Jacqueline Miller, a mammalogy technician from the ROM, said she was up to her waist in gore after removing the left lung and heart.

She had expected the heart to be the size of a car, but the organ was about the size of a small golf cart.

The aorta was enough to fit a human head, not a body.

Mark Engstrom, another researcher, found the study gruesome. “there's nothing that smells much worse than a dead whale,” he said.”

The heart was kept frozen for a year after the study. In June, it was placed in formaldehyde. The Royal Ontario Museum displays the plasticised heart.

“Big Blue Live,” a series airing on BBC One in the U.K. and on PBS in the U.S., showed the study process.