This is the first blue whale heart to be anatomically preserved. It is known as the largest animal on our planet, so it’s no wonder that the heart of the blue whale is also record-breaking.
Researchers have retrieved an enormous heart from a blue whale carcass in Newfoundland, and discovered that it weighs a staggering 440lbs (200kg), and is the same size as a Smartcar.
“We had to get the chest cavity opened to expose the heart and then get in there and freethe heart up from all of the surrounding tissues, getting in with what was left of the lungs and blood pretty much up to my waist,” explains Jacqueline Miller, a mammalogy technician from the ROM.
“It took four of us to push the heart out through a window we’d made between the ribs and the side of the chest cavity.”
The gigantic heart is on display at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. The heart was retrieved from a whale carcass that washed up on the shore of Newfoundland in 2014.
The whale was one of nine blue whales that died in the area when they became trapped in ice – an astonishing three percent of the wild population. When these 300,000-pound creatures die, they always sink. But in a rare event, two washed up on the shores of Trout River in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador.
Scientists were then able to salvage some of the whale’s organs to conduct never-before-done research. The heart, which measures 5x4x4ft and pumps out 220 litres of blood per beat, was in such good condition that it was a perfect candidate for preservation using a technique called plastination. During this process, researchers from the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto pumped the heart with fomaldehyde, stiffening the muscles as stopping decomposition.
They then soaked the heart in acetone to remove all the water from the tissue, down to the cellular level.
In order to remove all the water from the heart to preserve it, the heart remained in vacuum for more than four months.
Ms Miller referred to the heart as ‘Frankenheart’ and compared the unveiling to the birth of a child because of how long the team worked on it.
‘We’re very, very proud,’ she said, adding that the preserved heart could last for as long as 1,000 years.
When the reserachers weighed the heart, they discovered that it was a staggering 440 pounds, and the same size as a Smartcar.
Before it was displayed in Toronto, the heart traveled from Canada to Germany, where technicians worked on it for more than a year as no facility in North America was big enough to handle a whale heart (pictured in Guben, Germany in May 2017)
Researchers were able to remove some of the key organs, and the intact skeleton of the blue whale. The blue whale heart is being displayed next to the enormous skeleton of a blue whale (pictured) in the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto.
A human heart is shown for size comparison in front of the plastinated whale heart.
Source: bbc, dailymail.co.uk
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