Nikon has come up with a new twist on camera mounts. While most people attach their camera to a helmet or bicycle handlebars, this one fastens to a pet dog.

Not only that, but it also reads an animal's heartbeat, and can be set to snap a photo when the rate rises above a certain level – so the dog's owner can see exactly what has got him excited during the day.

Nikon has named its initiative Heartography. The mount works just like a standard heart rate sensor you would wear to the gym – it reads the dog’s heartbeat, and sends the information to the camera wirelessly over Bluetooth. The Pro Trinket microcontroller is coded to activate the shutter once the heart rate reaches a certain threshold. Then the servo arm depresses the shutter button and snaps a photo.

Owners had better hope their dogs – or amateur ‘phodographers’, as Nikon would have it – are excited by sunsets and nice vistas, and not certain parts of other canines.

The idea is to “literally connect emotions to every photo”. It’s just a concept at the moment, but it could be made real for humans.