See the hearts of an earthworm . Visit the sites - http://www.visualsunlimited.com/browse/v...
http://www.nhnature.org/life_underground...
The hearts as well as some of the blood vessels of earthworm are all in front region of body before the dark brown band called clitellum. Their hearts are essentially, large, muscular tubes, pulsatile and contractile. The earthworms for the first time in animal kingdom, developed pumping hearts. The earthworms have developed hemoglobin for transporting oxygen and their blood is red in color just like ours. We normally think of earthworms as small worms measuring a few inches or centimeters and a vast majority are small creatures. But there are some like the giant earthworm of Brazil which is certainly over a meter long and weighs nearly 500 kilograms. An octopus, a fast moving mollusk, has closed circulatory system and has three hearts, one systemic heart and two branchial hearts. Want to have a look at the hearts of octopus? Visit this interesting website
http://www.mote.org/~lauren/motenews/win... And also see a 3-D interactive heart of an apple snail http://www.applesnail.net/content/anatom... http://www.applesnail.net
A cockroach has a chain of hearts, in all totaling to 13. Some regard it as a single heart with 13 chambers. These are funnel shaped chambers with a pair of tiny holes called ostia. The ostia allow blood into the cockroach hearts. The hearts push the blood forward, in the direction of the head. Beneath the hearts are rhomboid alary (i.e. wing-shaped) muscles. Contraction and relaxation of the alary muscles pulls the blood nearer heart and Suction pressure fills the heart with blood entering through the ostia. Scorpions have a heart with 7 chambers and it is greenish in color. A prawn like, Indian fresh water prawn, Palemon malcomsonii has one heart with five pairs of ostia. There is a large variety of hearts in animals and let us get to know the lymph hearts in next article.
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