How Wildlife Cardiac Monitoring Is Revealing New Insights into Animal Health

A hibernating black bear can go as long as 20 to 30 seconds between heartbeats. While such a pause would be dangerous in a human, it is part of the bear’s natural response to winter, allowing it to conserve energy during hibernation.

Researchers are learning more about these unusual physiological adaptations through wildlife cardiac monitoring, using technology originally developed to track heart rhythms in human patients. A research initiative led by Dr Tim Laske, vice president of research for Cardiac Ablation Solutions at Medtronic, is deploying insertable cardiac monitors in animals across different continents to investigate their heart activity, stress responses and adaptation to their environments.

The findings are helping researchers build a better understanding of animal health and could also offer insights into the functioning of the human heart.

How cardiac monitors are being used in wildlife research

Laske and his international collaborators have been using Medtronic’s Reveal LINQ™ and LINQ II™ insertable cardiac monitors (ICMs) to study wildlife. The devices, donated by Medtronic, record heart rate and heart rate variability over extended periods.

Heart rate variability refers to changes in the time interval between successive heartbeats. Researchers can use these measurements as one indicator of an animal’s physiological response to stress.

The monitors are designed for human medical use. Implanted just beneath the skin in the chest, they continuously record heart rhythm and can operate for several years. In clinical settings, they help physicians identify irregular heart rhythms that may occur intermittently, including episodes that might otherwise go undetected.

This ability to collect data over long periods makes the devices useful for wildlife researchers. Rather than relying only on brief observations, they can examine how an animal’s heart responds to different activities, environments and events.

Laske says understanding the normal physiological patterns of animals is important for both wildlife management and improving conditions for animals in captivity.

“Understanding the normal states for animals is incredibly important to not only better manage them in the wild, but to know what type of conditions would be ideal for adaptation,” Laske said. “For captive animals, this helps us to understand how to give them the best quality of life.”

What animal heart rhythms reveal about stress and adaptation

The research is allowing scientists to investigate questions that are difficult to answer through observation alone. These include how stress affects a giant anteater, even when it does not display obvious signs of distress, and what constitutes a normal heart rhythm for Asian elephants living in Thailand.

The results can challenge what researchers might conclude from an animal’s outward behaviour.

For example, a bear may appear undisturbed when a drone flies overhead, yet its heart rate may show a sudden increase. Monitoring wolves over several years can reveal patterns of activity and rest, as well as changes in physiological stress that occasional observations could miss.

In another application, a rescued giant anteater released into the wild can be monitored as it adjusts to life outside captivity. Its cardiac data provides researchers with an additional way to assess how it responds to its environment after release.

These examples illustrate how continuous physiological measurements can complement conventional wildlife research, helping scientists understand not just where animals go or what they do, but how their bodies respond to their surroundings.

Medtronic-supported research expands to 28 species

The scope of the initiative has grown through collaborations with wildlife researchers in different parts of the world.

Within the 12 months preceding the company’s announcement, Laske and his collaborators supported 62 new LINQ ICM implants across nine species in North and South America and parts of Africa.

The overall research effort has now covered 28 species. Most are mammals, although caimans have recently been added to the list, extending the work to reptiles.

The devices are giving researchers access to physiological information that traditional wildlife tracking methods cannot provide on their own.

For decades, much wildlife research has concentrated on movement-related data, including migration routes, habitat ranges and spatial behaviour. Cardiac monitoring adds another dimension by recording changes within an individual animal’s body.

Researchers can use this information to investigate which circumstances are associated with stress, how animals respond to environmental changes and what conditions may support their survival and well-being.

Connecting wildlife conservation research with human cardiac science

The research has implications beyond improving the management of individual animal species. Studying how different animals regulate their heart activity under unusual conditions may also help scientists ask new questions about cardiovascular function.

The black bear’s ability to tolerate extremely long intervals between heartbeats during hibernation is one example of a physiological adaptation that differs markedly from normal human cardiac activity.

By examining such differences, researchers can expand their understanding of how the heart responds to changes in activity, temperature and other environmental conditions. The wildlife studies are not, by themselves, evidence of a new medical treatment, but they offer opportunities to investigate cardiac physiology across a wider range of species.

Laske believes the data can also deepen people’s understanding of the animals with which humans share the planet.

“This data, in addition to helping us understand how to better manage these species, provides knowledge, and a curiosity for us as humans to understand what’s happening with our wild, co-habitants on this planet,” he said.

He added that questions about what is normal for animals, and what their lives are like, can change how scientists approach their care while also broadening understanding of the heart itself.

By combining medical monitoring technology with field-based conservation research, the initiative is giving scientists a more detailed view of wildlife physiology. It is also demonstrating how tools developed for human healthcare can be applied in unexpected ways to study animal health and behaviour.