A non-invasive system to measure heart rate in hard-shelled sea turtles: potential for field applications

To measure the heart rate of unrestrained sea turtles, it has been believed that a probe must be inserted inside the body owing to the presence of the shell. However, inserting the probe is invasive and difficult to apply to animals in the field. Here, we have developed a non-invasive heart rate measurement method for some species of sea turtles. In our approach, an electrocardiogram (ECG) was performed using an animal-borne ECG recorder and two...