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observationistyesterday at 11:18 PM1 replyview on HN

Klingon whales, now?

There are measurements suited to purpose, then there are "technically you could do that" measurements, and it's the former we'd want to use when measuring what sorts of power and pressure and material properties of the vascular system and cardiac tissue of a whale. Enormous amounts of blood are being pumped around, and I'd have to imagine you're in the million miles of arteries and veins and capillaries ballpark, so there's a lot of pressure holding that mass back.

That'd be a fun model to figure out for a weekend project - what sorts of forces are we talking about - how efficient is it compared to say, a hummingbird, or a human, or an earthworm heart?


Replies

zakkitoday at 12:24 AM

But when things evolve they don't think if they will have enough heart capacity to pump the blood. They just evolve and by chance they got it right.

So why whale didn't get the chance to be bigger yet?