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 ...

BIG-HEARTED A Burmese python lets its organs shrivel between meals and re-enlarges them for the next feast with a chemical signal in its blood that turns out to work in lab mice also. Stephen M. Secor ...

In a paper in the current issue of Science, they report that a gorging python expands its heart by enlarging existing cells - a process called hypertrophy - and not by creating new ones.

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.

"Pythons can go months or even a year in the wild without eating and then consume something greater than their own body mass, yet nothing bad happens to them," said senior author Leslie Leinwand.

Pythons, much like elite athletes, excel at healthy heart growth. Her previous work has shown that over the course of about a week to 10 days after a meal, python hearts get much bigger, their heart ...

The heart alone grows 40 percent or more within three days. Leinwand, who studies human heart disease, stumbled across that description and saw implications for people.

Southern African python Amazing Grace died after starting to shed her skin. Picture: FreeMe Wildlife. In April, FreeMe Wildlife was happy that Amazing Grace defecated.