Zoo Atlanta gorilla takes own blood pressure

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Floyd Wood
IBB
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Summaries

Summary Sentence:

Zoo Atlanta partners with Georgia Tech's BME Dept.

Full Summary:

Consider this a new twist on the phrase “a trained monkey could do that.” In this case, actually, it’s a trained gorilla. Ozzie, the oldest of Zoo Atlanta’s 22 gorillas, has learned to take his blood pressure. It seems that heart disease is the main killer of gorillas in captivity. So Zoo Atlanta entered into a partnership with the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University to come up with a way to get blood pressure readings from the animals while they are awake.

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  • Ozzie..Zoo Atlanta Ozzie..Zoo Atlanta
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Consider this a new twist on the phrase “a trained monkey could do that.” In this case, actually, it’s a trained gorilla. Ozzie, the oldest of Zoo Atlanta’s 22 gorillas, has learned to take his blood pressure. It seems that heart disease is the main killer of gorillas in captivity. So Zoo Atlanta entered into a partnership with the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University to come up with a way to get blood pressure readings from the animals while they are awake.

Biomedical engineering students at Georgia Tech developed the “Gorilla Tough Cuff,” and Zoo Atlanta became the first place in the world to do the awake readings. More time is needed before veterinarians establish the normal blood pressure range for adult male gorillas.

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Parker H. Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience (IBB)

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Keywords
Biomedical Engineering, Georgia Tech, zoo atlanta
Status
  • Created By: Floyd Wood
  • Workflow Status: Published
  • Created On: Nov 29, 2009 - 8:00pm
  • Last Updated: Oct 7, 2016 - 11:06pm