Let’s imagine that organs can be perfectly grown in a lab and installed into a body without any chance of rejection or other complications usually associated with organ transplant.
You, a perfectly healthy adult human, go to the doctor and have them put a second heart in your chest that is connected to the circulatory system with your original heart.
What would be the effects of this? Could it even be done in this hypothetical situation at all?
Perfectly healthy? Probably the only real advantage is redundancy, but that comes at the cost of complexity, and on balance, I’d guess that it’s a net negative.
Mostly because I can’t think of any organism that normally has 2 hearts. If there were real advantages, it seems, I dunno. Inevitable?
Pretty sure giraffes have 2 hearts, I think the brachiosaurus also had 2 hearts too. I have a feeling there was a fish or other ocean creature with multiple hearts and maybe another mammal?
Heres some info I found real quick. No giraffe, several sea creatures, a couple land animals, one dino maybe, and some vague ambiguity.
Giraffes are mammals and only have 1 heart. It’s freaking huge, though, at 11 kilos.
octopus and cuddlefish and similar frequently have multiple “hearts” but they’re not the same as mammalian hearts. Briachiosaurus probably had an even larger heart than a giraffe, but it was still a singular, 4 chambered hear.