Question

How does heart size relate to the size of an animal?

Answer 1

Heart is the pumping organ of the body as it pumps blood to the body parts. The blood pumped from the heart carries oxygen and nutrients to the body parts. The blue whale has the largest size of the heart and the weight is about 400 pounds.

Complete answer:
Animals with large bodies also have large chest cavities which can accommodate the large size of the heart. More the size of the body more is the size of the heart In large bodies distance between organ and heart increases. Also, humans have a moderate size of the heart and also moderate body size.
Also larger the body size slower is the heart rate. An example is of a blue whale in which heartbeats about 9-10 beats in a minute and smaller animals eg shrew heart beats around 100 per minute.

Additional information: Size of the normal heart depends on age height, weight and sex of humans, Weight of a human heart is normally between 7 and 15 ounces. Size of the heart is slightly larger than the size of a fist. Heart of an adult beats for around 1 lakh times a day. Heart size tends to increase with age as the heart develops thicker walls and size of heart muscles increase.

Note: The main function of the heart is to pump blood. As the body size of the animal increases, the heart requires more power to pump the blood. Giraffes have around a length of 5 meters because of which they require a large heart to pump blood to such a long length . Followed by giraffes is the elephant which is heavier but the length of the elephant is less than a giraffe. Because of this giraffe has a larger heart than an elephant.