The animal kingdom is really fascinating. It is commonly thought that animals behave like human beings and that their organism contains the same as our body. The truth is that there are many types of animals that have nothing to do with humans , and it is hard to believe that there are types that have more than one heart with which they live.
What is the animal with the most hearts like?
The earthworm has a total of 10 hearts. There are 6,000 different types of this species. A very curious living being, whose body is divided into a series of rings. Hearts are found around these rings, which are actually aortic arches that are responsible for pumping blood around the body.
Earthworms are very important for the sustenance of other animals that roam the Earth. Birds, moles, foxes, or badgers feed on this type of species that has more than one heart, despite not having lungs or bones.
The importance of these animals is vital for ecosystems. The Egyptians already considered them providential for their way of life, and they are known as the ‘ecosystem engineers’. For Charles Darwin, father of the theory of evolution, these earthworms are “the most important animals in history” despite their simple vital organization.
Other animals with more than one heart
Earthworms are not the only living things on the planet that have more than one heart. For example, in the sea we find two animals that have more than one heart . It’s about the squid and the octopus .
Both marine animals have three hearts. One of them perform the function that all the hearts of living beings fulfill, however, the other two use them to transport blood to the gills.
On the other hand we find the mixines , animals considered the most primitive of today. They have a strange anatomy, and they have more than one heart that performs different functions.
The main one serves to pump blood like human hearts, the other three hearts are accessible and are located in the liver and tail . The job of these two hearts is to complement the pumping of the main heart to other places in the body of the mixins.
These mixins are really strange, they belong to the lamprey family and are considered one of the ugliest specimens on the planet.
