The blue whale has a lot of heart.
Thought to be the biggest animal to ever inhabit the Earth, the creature would presumably have an impressive ticker, too.
But this has been a guessing game because preserved blue whale hearts are rare, according to a new series called "Big Blue Live," airing on PBS in the U.S. and BBC in the U.K.
In a teaser posted to YouTube, a technician from The Royal Ontario Museum shows off what is believed to be one of the few blue whale hearts ever preserved. It weighs nearly 400 pounds and its dimensions are 5 feet by 4 feet by 4 feet. It's "the world's biggest heart," according to the BBC.
The museum got the sample from a dead 76-foot blue whale that washed ashore in Newfoundland after it got trapped in ice, the BBC reported.
The find has verified that some of science's best guesses about the blue whale haven't been so exact.
"I was expecting something the size of a car, but found a heart more like the size of maybe a small golf cart or circus bumper car for two," Jacqueline Miller, a mammalogy technician at the museum, told the BBC.
National Geographic's website has this to say about blue whales: "Their tongues alone can weigh as much as an elephant. Their hearts, as much as an automobile."
Time to update.
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