Your Smartwatch's Heart Rate Monitor Was Developed by a Furry

pcmag.com:

Twenty years ago, heart rate monitors were single-purpose, dedicated devices focused on health and fitness. Today they’re incredibly common and built into just about every major fitness tracker and smartwatch, thanks to the development of the optical heart rate sensor. There’s a good chance you’re wearing one now, but here’s something you probably didn’t know about the technology: It was invented by a furry.

David Benaron, MD, is a biochemist, inventor, and entrepreneur. He studied at Harvard and MIT, taught at Stanford, and has founded and served in the C-suites of multiple biotech companies. He developed the sensor that enables heart rate monitoring on wearables like smartwatches, and has made advances in the field of optical blood-oxygen monitoring as well.

He’s also a cheetah named Spottacus and a regular at furry conventions, often kitted out head-to-toe in a fursuit. 

In case you're unaware, a furry is an enthusiast of role-playing an anthropomorphic animal-person. We should note here that fursuiters are a specific subgroup among furries. Not every furry actually dresses up like a big fluffy animal for conventions and gatherings, which is a common misconception; that specific type of furry is known as a "fursuiter."

Spottacus(Opens in a new window) got on my radar through Twitter. I have several friends who are furries with online presences, and one retweeted Spottacus talking about green light heart rate sensors a few weeks ago, which piqued my interest. Obviously, simply claiming to have invented such a technology is easy to do on social media, so I reached out to him regarding his research and then dug into records to confirm what he told me.

Of course, technology and consumer-ready electronics are almost never