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Pet Heartbeats
Name: Tim
Status: Student
Grade: 6-8
Location: CA
Date: N/A
Question:
Hi My name is junior and iam going to do a project on how
many times a cat's heart beats and how many times does a dog's heart
beats and I need some help and ideas on how to do this?
Replies:
Hello Tim!
Well I think that is a fun project! The way most veterinarians would
tell how many times an animals heat beats is to use a stethoscope,
which is the same thing human doctors use to listen to your heart. I'm
guessing you don't have one of these around, but that's okay because
there are other ways to gather an animals heart rate. (You are
actually looking for heart rate, which is the number of times a heart
beats / unit time. Usually it is recorded in beats/minute). Here are
some ideas:
Because every time a heart beats it pushes blood through the body, you
can measure heart rate by measuring pulse rate. If you put your figure
up to the side of your neck you can feel a pulse; another place to feel
your own pulse is on your wrist. If you ever watch medical shows on
TV, sometimes you will see an actor place their fingers on the neck or
on the wrist of another actor to see if there is a pulse. You can use
an animal's pulse in just the same way to measure heart rate. Where to
do this is a little bit different. The easiest place on a cat or dog
to measure heart rate, in my opinion at least, is on the side of their
neck (where you will feel the pulse of their jugular vein).
Now one important thing to keep in mind is that dogs and cats (esp
cats) can get stressed if they are being handled in an odd way or if
they are scared. Only work with cats and dogs you know, and be sure
you are being safe in approaching them and handling them. Just like
you an me, if they get stressed, their hearts start to beat faster, and
sometimes they will get upset and try to scratch or bite. So the best
way to get a representative heart rate in these animals is to be sure
they are in a comfortable environment and are relaxed.
You'll want to count the number of pulse beats in their vein for 1
minute, and that will be your beats per minute. You may be able to
feel two beats that occur very quickly in a row, one of which is
stronger than the other - in this case, just count the stronger beat.
If you can't get them to hold still for that long, you can take their
heart rate for 30 seconds, and multiple that number by 2. You'll
probably want to repeat taking their heart rate a few times to be sure
you have a consistent number! Also, it's a good idea to take the heart
rate of a number of different animals. What you'll find is that there
is a range of heart rates in cats and dogs, and often times,
particularly with dogs, the breed or size of the animal effects how
fast their heat beats! You'll also notice that in general, the heart
rate of cats is a bit higher than the heart rate in dogs.
Just to be complete I should mention that there are some disease
conditions where the pulse isn't reflective of the heart rate, and so
in general it's not the method that veterinarians use to determine
heart rate. In fact, veterinarians sometimes actually determine more
than one type of heart rate for a given animal, if their heart is not
functionally normally. However, for a healthy animal with a healthy
heart, pulse rate can generally be used to determine heart rate, and I
think for the project you are taking about, that is a perfectly
reasonable method to go about things!!
Good luck and have fun!!
Susannah
Univ. of Wisc. School of Vet. Med.
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Update: June 2012
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