Living without a heart

Rules:

1. No magic
2. Eat, drink, and breathe air (mammal/reptile(amphibian ok))
3. Intelligent life form (no jellyfish or single-celled organisms)
4. No artificial hearts (unless really ingenious, no swapping)

My thought:

A creature's veins/arteries were circuits and pulsed (kinda like esophagus bringing food to the stomach, except on a smaller scale). The veins would circle around the lungs and absorb oxygen and then distribute oxygen as it was pushed along. This idea is based loosely on the artificial heart that doesn't beat (summary=continuous-flow artificial heart).

Is it feasible for a foreign/alien creature to survive without a heart? Also are there any drawbacks to not having a biological heart or strange side effects?

To clarify, blood is not a necessary requirement if they can act intelligently. However, the creature must be organic/living: no AI robots. In my mind, a creature without a specific local organ to push blood/oxygen to its muscles would be harder to kill. It could still bleed to death as blood should be flowing in some manner to muscles, but there would be no particular spot to target to kill it instantly (excluding maybe the head, since there is no heart).

posted over 9 years ago

depperm‭

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