Nature Activity
Giraffes
Your heart is an amazing muscle with the ability to pump just the right amount of blood to every part of your body every second of every day! Just imagine . . . your heart has been beating constantly since you’ve been alive. It never gets tired, and thankfully, it never has to take a break! Every single cell in your body depends on your heart to give it what it needs to survive. That’s why it’s so important to stay strong and healthy.
Compared to a human heart, a giraffe’s heart is a machine! Weighing in at twenty-six pounds, this heart has to be able to pump blood all the way to the giraffe’s head—a destination that is six feet away! With all those neck exercises that a giraffe must do— bending down low to drink from the local watering hole to raising its head up high to eat some leaves from a nearby tree—it’s really important that a giraffe’s brain gets just the right amount of blood!
Now if you’re thinking that only a really big heart would be able to do that, think again. God is an amazing Creator who created the giraffe’s heart to be small, but incredibly powerful! In fact, it’s so powerful that it beats twice as fast as yours and pumps blood with twice as much pressure.
Blood pressure is very important and changes constantly depending on what you’re doing, whether you’re resting or playing, crying or laughing, scared or excited and so many other things. Aren’t you glad that God created your heart with the ability to provide blood to your body with just the right pressure? And, the best part is that it all happens automatically, so you never have to worry about it! There is one pressure that you do need to worry about, and that is peer pressure. A lot of kids will do things they normally wouldn’t do, just to feel like they fit in with the crowd. But God wants you to be different than the world. He wants you to be like Him. Pray each day: “Dear Jesus, Help me to be more like . . . You!”
Do not be misled: “Bad company corrupts good character.”
–1 Corinthians 15:33