Photograph by Joe McDonald, Corbis Python Hearts Double in Size—Now We Know Why Fats in the giant snakes' blood mysteriously balloon organs, study says.

After pythons eat a meal, their organs — including their hearts — nearly double in size within a day. Now, researchers have learned how the snakes are able to achieve this sort of growth ...

Researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder study fast-growing python hearts, which could provide insights to aid those with diseased heart growth. Their latest work reveals ways to study ...

Burmese pythons add 40 percent to their hearts' muscle mass within 48 hours of feeding, according to new research, which found that the process is fully reversible.

Leinwand wanted to know if python physiology might be the key to human drug treatments. In humans, heart growth can be a sign of health or of disease: Athletes' hearts grow large with exercise ...

In a paper in the current issue of Science, they report that a gorging python expands its heart by enlarging existing cells - a process called hypertrophy - and not by creating new ones.