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 ...

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.] ...

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 ...

One of the world's largest snakes, the Burmese python can grow as long as 25 feet (7.6 meters) and weigh as much as 200 pounds (90 kilograms). Native to Southeast Asia, it preys on mammals, birds ...

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 rate doubles, and their bloodstream turns milky white with ...

So Leinwand's team - led by a grad student who initially was fearful of snakes - ordered up some pythons and began testing their hearts. Surprise 1: A digesting python's blood gets so full of fat ...

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.

After a year, Dr. Cecilia Riquelme determined that she could enlarge the heart of a starved python by injecting blood from a feasting one. She dropped plasma from a fed python into a lab dish ...