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Dogs poop in
line with Earth’s magnetic field, says study
A study
published this week in the journal Frontiers in Zoology suggests that dogs
choose to relieve themselves along a north-south axis in line with Earth’s
magnetic field. The Motherboard blog reported on the study’s findings, saying
that the research was carried out by a team of Czech and German scientists.
“Dogs are
sensitive to small variations of the Earth’s magnetic field,” said the research
team. “Dogs preferred to excrete with the body being aligned along the
North-south axis” rather than the East-west axis.
The study
examined the daily habits of 70 dogs during 1,893 defecations and 5,582
urinations over the course of two years. Consistently, during times of calm
electromagnetic “weather,” the dogs chose to eliminate while facing north or
south.
Dogs are not
the only animals that are sensitive to the Earth’s magnetism. When it comes
time for them to mate, salmon use their sense of the Earth’s magnetism to find
their way back to the spawning grounds where they were born. Birds, similarly,
migrate along magnetic lines. Even ants have been proven to have a sense of the
Earth’s alignment and to distinguish between north, south, east and west.
As to why
the dogs prefer to poop facing north or south rather than east or west, that’s
still a mystery.
“It is still
enigmatic why the dogs do align at all, whether they do it ‘consciously’ (i.e.,
whether the magnetic field is sensorial perceived (the dogs ‘see,’ ‘hear’ or
‘smell’ the compass direction or perceive it as a haptic stimulus) or whether
its reception is controlled on the vegetative level (they ‘feel better/more
comfortable or worse/less comfortable’ in a certain direction),” wrote
researchers, “Our analysis of the raw data (not shown here) indicates that dogs
not only prefer N-S direction, but at the same time they also avoid E-W
direction.”
The dogs did
not exhibit the preference, however, when they were being walked on leashes. It
was only when left to their own devices that they expressed the preference.
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