4 Fun Facts about the Human Heart

This organ does a lot more than pump blood. Find out some of its most fascinating attributes.

heart made of rose petals
(Image credit: Photodisc)

In their new book, The Sublime Engine: A Biography of the Human Heart, the brothers Stephen and Thomas Amidon, one a writer and one a cardiologist, have written what they call a "biography of this remarkable machine" — one full of both scientific and literary information about that bodily organ most commonly represented as a red thing shaped like two ears pressed together.

The brothers sent along some fun facts about the heart: