Polar Bioscience,12,40-46,1999
Preliminary report of new method for ECG measurement of exercising birds
Maki Kuroki, Akiko Kato, Shin-ichi Hayama and Yasuhiko Naito
To measure the heart rate of diving seabirds, we tested a new method of attaching electrodes and a miniaturized EGG logger with high memory capacity (2 Mbytes) and high frequent sampling (5 ms). A needle type electrode was insert into subcutaneos tissue of Adelie penguins, and an electrode was implanted under the sternum of hens. Both electrodes were connected to a logger attached to the back of the bird. The mean ± SD of heart rate of penguins for 3 h and of hens for 1 h during a resting period were 74.9 ± 15.4 bpm and 245.3 ± 12.1 bpm, respectively. The EGG showed electric noise during exercising periods. However, as R peaks were countable in those periods, it was possible to calculate the heart rate during exercising periods from the interval between R peaks.Though the implantation method needs some recovery time for birds after surgery before the EGG measurement, the method reduce the electric noise caused by the locomoter muscle and electrode movement and is suitable to measure the EGG of the free-ranging seabirds during dives.
PG99-2
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