(PCM) New research has been conducted by a group of Czech and German scientists and their study has found that dog’s will poop along a north-south axis in line with Earth’s magnetic field.
The new study was recently published in the science journal “Frontiers In Zoology” and gosh, I kinda feel bad for the scientists that had to record the observations for this research experiment…nothing better than watching the day to day habits of 70 dogs during 1,893 defecations and 5,582 urinations over the course of two years. That’s a lot of excrement!
The research teams claimed “Dogs are sensitive to small variations of the Earth’s magnetic field. Dogs preferred to excrete with the body being aligned along the North-south axis” rather than the East-west axis.”
What was also interesting about the study is that dogs that were walked on a leash did not show any preference a being in line with Earth’s magnetic field, however when left to their own devices to choose their own spot to relieve themselves they expressed the preference to be in line with the magnetic field.
“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 indicates that dogs not only prefer N-S direction, but at the same time they also avoid E-W direction.”
Guess we can sum this up to another one of life’s big mysteries! Can’t really see everyone out there standing behind Fido as he poops trying to determine if it is magnetically in line!
