Police are used to handling cases concerning missing items or persons.

But even the most hardened cop might be flummoxed by this ticker twister.

Police in Ohio, USA are scratching their heads after an ambulance crew reported finding a fresh human heart in the middle of a field some 100km southwest of Cleveland. 

"It was fresh; it wasn't decomposed," Norwalk, Ohio, police chief Dave Light said, the Washington Post reported.

Paramedics called police, who took the heart to the county coroner's office. There, it was tested, with the coroner saying he is "95 per cent sure" the heart is human. 

But with no reports of organ theft, bodies being tampered with or graves disturbed, police simply aren't sure who the missing heart belongs to. 

They are now hoping that media coverage of the find will help them solve the mystery. 

The heart has now been shipped to a veterinarian for further testing, to ensure with 100 per cent certainty that the heart is a human one. 

Pigs and chimpanzees, for instance, have hearts that could easily be mistaken for human ones. Surgeons sometimes use heart valves from pigs in human surgeries, and pig-to-primate transplant experiments are widely publicised.