Who would have thought that cockroaches have something to offer modern science? Well, it turns out that while human hearts have four chambers, a cockroach heart uses 13, leaving plenty of redundancy. When a chamber fails in a human heart, you basically have a heart attack and most likely die, while a cockroach can have a chamber fail and barely notice it.

This new Biventricular Pump artificial heart developed at the Indian Institute of Technology in Kharagpur, uses a multi-chamber design just like those pesky roaches, and designer Sujoy K. Guha says this vastly improves its long-term reliability when compared with more traditional pneumatic designs. Judging by how hard it can be to kill off a roach infestation, I think he might just be right.

So far the heart has been tested successfully on a frog, and Guha hopes to test it with a goat soon.

Telegraph India, via Gizmowatch