David Ferguson
The Raw Story
Thu, 02 Jan 2014 10:49 CST

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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.

David Ferguson David Ferguson is an editor at Raw Story. He was previously writer and radio producer in Athens, Georgia, hosting two shows for Georgia Public Broadcasting and blogging at Firedoglake.com and elsewhere. He is currently working on a book.

makes sense, to me anyway... most pack animals have invisible territorial borders, maybe now they are not so invisible....

nobody cares about dog doo? amazing...

Hahahaa!

That article is a big steaming load of poop.

I've had a few dogs in my life and none of them ever gave a poop which direction they were pooping in.

This article reminds me of this really stupid study I learned about from some show on netflix.

Some nut job made the assumption that cows all over the world were facing either North or South. He then proceeded to waste money trying to prove this idea and suggested that it was because of the North and South poles. At one point they used a very strong electromagnet to throw of their sense of direct and get a group of cows to face the magnet. Big surprise. The cows did nothing. NOTHING!!!

The biggest mystery to me was why anyone actually cared enough to piss their money away on this ridicules idea and why the producers of the show actually put it into one of their episodes.

I think I want to do a study to find out if cats are sexually attracted to soda, Anyone have money to piss away on funding that study?

Want know why we haven't cured cancer? Because they doing stupid studies on garbage like this. lol

I need to take a nap now to keep my head from exploding. hahaha

I wonder if they have a head or tail one way in particular. Being aligned could give more blood flow to the muscles contracting to defecate. Then, such a tendecy would have a muscle sensation that the dog could pick up on with practice. This could be entirely wrong, but that is the kicker of any scientific process!

Izzy, jeesh! You know something, when people have elevated levels or iron in their circulating blood, or even to a lesser extent all blood, the earth's field or magnetic potential does pull on it. It doesn't matter so much when one is standing or sitting nearly straight, but if one is lying down north-south, blood can be drawn and pool in the head or feet. If one is sensitive and has a weak constitution, the extra blood surging the brain tissue can keep the thoughts rolling when trying to fall asleep. If you're old and faulty, it could cause night time hemorage. So here we have dogs and animals doing things that must humans have forgotten how to do. See, even dogs forget when around there masters, so far removed from our natural state modern man has come to be. Forget might not be the right word for either here. It is more an ignoring and pushing aside of motivation to act out by those nearest us. It is a waste of money if one doesn't care about small wonders which can be amusing or learning opportunities. If you want to talk about a waste, think about tax dollars poorly spent on military defense or intelligence agencies, so they could read this post about dog dung if they wanted to.

I think we haven't cured cancer because we keep sowing the seeds of disease- a polluted and heavily toxic environmental cocktail of stressors and a poor diet.

i agree, if someone wants to put an honest study into things like this, i have no problem with it... it may seem like worthless info to some, but in the bigger scheme of things, it just adds to the information pool...

What a load of pooh

Divine did.

Anyone gets that reference. You rock.

anyone?