Wearable Tech for all Creatures Great and Small

Wearable tech in animals is evolving to quantified Earth

“Hello, ma’am. Are you interested in AI?” The weathered gentleman in the cowboy hat greeted me as I ambled by his wearable tech booth. He wasn’t referring to artificial intelligence; he was referring to artificial insemination. In cows.

The setting wasn’t a neon exhibit hall at a huge tech conference in Vegas. It was a dusty concourse at the National Western Stock Show in my hometown of Denver. Wearable tech has migrated from the tech halls to the rodeo pavilions. And it’s moved from the gyms to the grasslands.

While dog trackers that measure frolic indexes have been around for a while, they just scratch the surface of what’s going on in animal tracking. Wearable tech for animals is big business and growing by leaps and bounds. Marketing analysts point out the popularity of pet trackers and the growth of dairy and meat producing countries. Scientists are noting the importance of biologging and biotelemetry, and speak of quorum sensing and a global animal collective.

It’s been estimated that there are about 7.77 million species of animals on Earth. When the estimate was made, in 2011, about 953,500 species had been described and cataloged. So essentially we have several million species to track that have yet to even be described!

Wearable tech will be used to track animals including pets, livestock, and endangered species. The tracking of animals will be integrated with environmental tracking (weather patterns, temperature, light, chemicals and pH, depth/altitude). It will play an essential role in food supply, conservation efforts, understanding physiology (e.g. hibernation metabolism), anticipating natural disasters, and predicting disease outbreaks.

Roll over, Quantified Self. Make way for Quantified Earth!

This post and presentation provide a more in-depth and expanded version of an invited talk given at the International Conference on Ambulatory Monitoring of Physical Activity and Movement (ICAMPAM) in Limerick, Ireland.