Like I said, oh hai! Wow, I wasn’t expecting all of you here! Enjoy a random photo of some awesome anatomy, Boing Boing universe, and thanks for the nice story!!
Note that an elephant’s heart does not end in the stereotypical single apex (point) at the left ventricle. Elephants have a 2-pointed heart, with two large ventricles used to pump blood to the body AND lungs… who else has this feature? Ahh yes, their closest living relatives: seacows (manatees, dungongs; the Sirenia)! Probably a leftover swimming adaptation. Big, muscular ventricles (the darker purplish tissue to the left and right of the yellow-pinkish line of tissue running from top to bottom along the middle) are useful for pumping blood against resistance, such as when using the trunk as a snorkel while swimming.
The bottom of the heart is at the bottom of the screen; you’re looking straight at the front of the heart.
Human heart for comparison, from Wikipedia; scale relative to pic above is not too far off (elephant relatively a bit undersized):
For more info on elephant hearts, see here and here, and for the hardcore anatomists, here and here.
And more about elephants from Inside Nature’s Giants, too!
What's In John's Freezer? 
Oh and hello Redditors too; the bacon midnights at narwhal and all that. 😉
And Metafilter, wow!
And Gizmodo!?
And hello from your sister, too! Way to go my famous big brother! I will now be able to brag to my surgeon colleagues about how my brother does himself some real surgery and not that kids stuff they do.
Aww thanks sis! 🙂
Recap of the nice “elephant guts” stories below; thanks for all the positive feedback, internetarians! 😉
the Boing Boing story that started it all- http://boingboing.net/2012/04/26/whats-inside-an-elephant.html
Metafilter: http://www.metafilter.com/115348/A-biologist-never-forgets-whats-inside-an-elephant
Gizmodo- http://gizmodo.com/5905617/you-might-not-want-to-look-at-these-explicit-images-of-an-elephants-innards-nsfw/gallery/1
IO9- http://io9.com/5905767/this-is-what-the-inside-of-an-elephant-looks-like
And of course, Reddit’s WTF provided some amusing comments:
http://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/stsyv/what_happens_when_you_turn_an_elephant_insideout/
[…] Facebook pages. A mass of around 10kg (22 lbs weight) is not unusual! (Compare with even larger elephant heart) Share this:TwitterFacebookLike this:LikeBe the first to like […]
[…] big heart, needed to pump blood up that long neck to the head. Compare with the elephant and rhino hearts posted here […]