Pioneering research on humpback whale hearts reveals surprising insights into electrical impulses and heart function, revolutionising our approach to treating human cardiac abnormalities.
In 1926, pioneering cardiologist Frits Meijler embarked on a quest to record the heart activity of the world’s largest mammals, with near-disaster when his cetacean subjects damaged equipment.
It wasn’t until 1991 that a recording was finally made, of a 30-tonne humpback, challenging previous understandings of heart function.
Decades of research into the whale heart – the size of a grand piano – have revealed profound insights into heart function across species. Scientists discovered that the time taken for electrical impulses to travel from the top to the bottom of an animal’s heart does not proportionally increase with their size.
This finding led to the understanding that these heart regions do not simply conduct electrical signals like wires. Instead they are control centres that can be tweaked and altered to treat heart abnormalities in humans
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