The systole of a hyperbolic 3-manifold is the length of the shortest closed geodesic. Given a closed 3-manifold M and link L such that M\L is hyperbolic, the essential systole of M\L is the length of the shortest closed geodesic which is not nullhomotopic in M. In this talk, we will discuss and motivate the study of essential systoles of hyperbolic link complements, including their application towards answering a question of Freedman and Krushkal about the existence of “filling links” in closed 3-manifolds.