How strange a non-strange heavy baryon?

We give some general arguments in favor of the large magnitude of matrix elements of an operator associated with nonvalence quarks in heavy hadrons. We estimate matrix element 1 2mΛb 〈Λb|s̄s|Λb〉 ≃ 1 ÷ 2 for Λb baryon whose valence content is b, u, d quarks. This magnitude corresponds to a noticeable contribution of the strange quark into the heavy baryon mass 1 2mΛb 〈Λb|mss̄s|Λb〉 ≃ 200 ÷ 300MeV . The arguments are based on the QCD sum rules and low energy theorems. The physical picture behind of the phenomenon is somewhat similar to the one associated with the large strange content of the nucleon where matrix element 〈p|s̄s|p〉 ≃ 1 by no means is small. We discuss some possible applications of the result. 1 e-mail address:[email protected]