This Preserved Blue Whale Heart’s Got The Internet Talking, It Weighs…

If there is one person who appreciates a big heart, it is RPG Chairman Harsh Goenka. The business magnate often speaks about the importance of kindness, compassion, and generosity on Twitter. His latest post on a large heart, though, was a little bit unique. Goenka tweeted a picture of an actual humongous pumping organ of the largest creature on Earth. Sharing a snap of a preserved blue whale heart, he described its size, weight, and impact with a tone of awe. “This is the preserved heart of a blue whale which weighs 181 kg. It measures 1.2 meters wide and 1.5 meters tall and its heartbeat can be heard from more than 3.2 km away,” he wrote.

The tweet has gone viral with over one lakh views in less than a day. People in the comments section are amazed by the organ of a blue whale.

“Whoaaaaaaa universe has its own creativity from plants to animals to humans. From an ant to a whale how beautifully created,” one user marvelled.

“Its sheer size alone accelerates decomposition, so it’s remarkable how they got to salvage a heart,” wrote another.

Then there were those who found humour in the hugeness. One user alluded to the infamous “matchbox-sized Mumbai homes” stereotype, saying “that was the size of my first house in Mumbai.”

“Wow! Now we should mention the whale’s heart instead a lion’s heart,” wrote another.

This heart, the only manually preserved one of its kind, was extracted from a blue whale’s carcass in 2014. To extract and preserve the giant marine mammal’s ticker, 10 workers had to first pull back strips of flesh and bones. To prevent the heart from flattening due to a lack of blood, researchers inserted hoses into two blood vessels and corked the remaining ones with plungers and plastic bottles. After pumping in 700 gallons of formaldehyde, the organ was stiffened, the decomposition halted, and the heart was back in shape.

For plastination, the organ had to be shipped off to Germany. So, it was wrapped in absorbent mats, snuggled in a steel tank with packing peanuts, and put on a flight. For the next six months, German anatomists soaked the heart in acetone, which gradually replaced all the water molecules in it. It was then sent to silicone polymer solution and a vacuum chamber. After a gaseous curing agent hardened the silicone for three months, the plastinated heart finally popped out.

It is now on display in the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto.

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