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Unlocking heart health: Advancing noninvasive monitoring in chimpanzees

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2024-06-27 14:30:04

This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility:

Measuring the heart rate of great apes in captivity is essential for both health management and animal studies. However, most existing methods are either invasive or inaccurate.

Now, researchers from Japan have investigated the potential of using millimeter-wave radar technology to estimate heart rate from subtle body movements in chimpanzees. Their efforts will hopefully pave the way to better practices and techniques for monitoring heart rates in wild and captive primates. Their work has been published in the American Journal of Primatology.

Just like in humans, heart rate is a critically important and informative vital sign in nonhuman primates. Heart diseases are among the main causes of death of nonhuman primates in captivity, and monitoring their heart rate regularly can help veterinarians catch symptoms early.