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You have just one heart beating in your chest. But an octopus swimming deep in the ocean has three — all beating at the same time!
One big heart + two smaller helper hearts
Why would an animal need so many hearts? Let's dive in and find out. 🌊
A heart is a pump. It squeezes to push blood around the body. Blood is like a delivery van — it carries oxygen (the "air" our bodies need) to every part.
Squeeze… release… squeeze… — that's a heartbeat.
Tap each glowing heart to discover what it does. See if you can find all three!
0 of 3 hearts found
The two purple hearts are called gill hearts. Their only job is to push blood through the gills — the octopus's underwater "lungs" that grab oxygen from the water.
Give the gill hearts a hand! Tap the pump button to send blood through the gills and fill them with oxygen.
Pumps: 0 / 8
Your blood is red because of iron. But octopus blood is blue! It uses a special copper-based helper called haemocyanin to carry oxygen.
The catch: blue blood is not very good at carrying oxygen, especially in cold, deep water. Tap to see why that matters. 👇
When an octopus swims, something odd happens: its main heart stops beating! That's why octopuses get tired quickly and prefer to crawl along the seabed instead.
🤔 Quick think: With blue blood that carries little oxygen AND a main heart that pauses when swimming, why might THREE hearts be so helpful for an octopus?
Tap a job word, then it will jump to the heart it belongs to. Fill both slots!
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Here's the amazing story of the three hearts: