Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/01/16/dogs-use-earths-magnetic-fie.html
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I use Earth’s magnetic fields to determine where to poop. Yes, I’m more dog than human.
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I’m on a high iron diet. I use magnets to help me poop.
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Is that why I’m drawn to you?
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It is your magnetic personality.
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I’m in the middle of a bathroom remodel and now I’m considering aligning my toilet with the poles.
Maybe a compass rose tile mosaic on the floor.
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No, it’s yours, lets not argue, please.
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This has come across my path a few times in the last few months. It’s false. It’s clearly and obviously false, just go to a dog park and watch.
The internet is broken.
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So I should be using neodymium on my mailbox instead of cayenne?
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The shit that passes for scientific research nowadays. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
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Whereas Cats use ‘how pissed they are at you’ as the determining factor.
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Actual 365 day representation of dog poop locations in a local park.
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The dogs turn in a circle to create a gyro effect and poop to true north, not magnetic.
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And we’re ruled out all other possible explanations, like maybe the dogs don’t want the sun in their eyes when they poop?
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Curious about time of day as well as what hemisphere this was tested in in along with weather. How much exactly does the sun’s location influence this?
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I believe they also prefer to use their shits to mark another scent. Pee being the fine point marker and the other, the jumbo felt tip. Typically my dog’s shits are clearly ‘inspired’ by a newly encountered scent, presumably one that, at last, is ‘just right’.
These two factors can be simultaneously true.
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I smell an Ig-Nobel prize!
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Do dogs in the southern hemisphere circle counterclockwise before pooping?
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Perfect.
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I just gave the original paper a quick read (I don’t think I’m capable of seeing a headline like that and not looking at the research). Unsurprising, the paper has a lot of dogshit.
There was no preference in orientation along magnetic fields. So they went through a series of directed analyses to find that if they correlated their poop data to rate of change in declination angle, then in a narrow range of angular changes they found a preference for north-south orintation and concluded that the dogs were super sensitive to the changes in magnetic field. dogshit science
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