In your lifetime your heart will beat around three billion times
and pump enough blood to fill 5,500 large swimming pools!
Your heart never gets tired. It works very hard to pump blood
around your body.
You might think that your heart is on the left side of your
chest, but it is in the middle of your chest. It is about the size
of your fist. This may seem quite small, but your heart is one of
the most powerful muscles in your body. Your heart is so
powerful that it can squirt blood out to 10 metres!
Your heart has to work hard because blood takes oxygen
everywhere in your body. The heart is made of two
pumps. The right side pumps the blood to the lungs to get
oxygen. Then the left side gets the blood and pumps it all
round the body.
Our hearts normally beat 72 times a minute - that's quite a lot
when you think about it. Compared to this a blue whale's
heart only beats 6 times, and a hummingbird's heart can beat around
1000 times a minute. But a hummingbird's heart is only the size of
a grain of rice; the heart of the blue whale is the same size as a
car!
Did you know? Octopuses and squid have three
hearts! They have two hearts which pump blood to the
gills. The third heart pumps blood to the rest of the
body.
