Pythons can eat up to quarter of their body weight, or 40 pounds, in one meal. It turns out those huge meals make their hearts stronger and may offer insight into how to treat heart disease in humans.

Large muscle mass doesn't equate to better performance. You can inject the mice with it to make their heart muscle increase in size, but it won't go through the conditioning the python does during ...

Three days after a feeding, a python's heart mass can increase as much as 40 percent, before reverting to its pre-meal size once digestion is completed, Secor said. ### Journal. Science.

Grow an Olympic-sized heart with Burmese python plasma Now, a fatty acid cocktail derived from the blood of well-fed pythons has been used to promote healthy heart growth, in mice.