Python hearts balloon in size as they're digesting, and now scientists are studying them for clues about human heart health. The expanded python heart appears remarkably similar to the larger-than ...

When a Burmese python swallows a tasty rat dinner, the reptile makes new heart muscle to help digest the big meal, biologists have found. The predator has a special protein to expand its cardiac ...

According to the study, it only took 24 hours after eating a large meal for the python heart to become much less stiff. [Related: Stressed rattlesnakes just need a little help from their friends.] ...

The expanded python heart appears remarkably similar to the larger-than-normal hearts of Olympic-calibre athletes. Colorado researchers report they’ve figured out how the snakes make it happen.

Yet once a python has finished its meal, its heart quickly returns to its usual size. Heart Remodeling. Hicks, the University of California ecologist and evolutionary biologist, ...

Leslie Leinwand - a University of Colorado at Boulder molecular biologist who studies heart disease in humans called pythons’ expanding hearts “amazing biology”. “They're not swelling up ...

In people, high triglycerides are dangerous. But the python heart was burning fat so rapidly for fuel that it didn't have time to clog anything up, Leinwand said. Surprise 2: ...

In the first 24 hours after a python devours its massive prey, its heart grows 25%, its cardiac tissue softens dramatically, and the organ squeezes harder and harder to more than double its pulse.