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Dogs Defecate In Alignment With Earth's Magnetic Field
Daniel_Stuckey writes "But for whatever its worth, all that spinning is far from arbitrary. What dog owners witness is a small and furry version of the aurora borealis and a link between species and environment that's as holistic and beautiful as a dog pooping can be. A team of Czech and German researchers found that dogs actually align themselves with the Earth's magnetic field when they poop. Proving at least that they're really devoted to their work, the researchers measured the direction of the body axis of 70 dogs from 37 breeds during 1,893 defecations and 5,582 urinations over the course of two years, and found that dogs "prefer to excrete with the body being aligned along the North-south axis under calm magnetic field conditions." They fittingly published their results [abstract] in the journal Frontiers in Zoology ."
sounds like a shitty job
Maybe that's why I prefer to use the north-south oriented bathroom in my house instead of the east-west one.
I smell bullshit moving around the news media at this moment.
I suspect the dogs just don't like staring into the sun then they poo. I'd also speculate that since streets and walls tend to be aligned with the cardinal directions there's an overall alignment augmentation due to their surroundings. finally if they like to poo in a shadow of a tree then likely they may face back to the tree and thus have a bias to north or south alignments.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
What the shit
I do the same, and I have a special rotating toilet in my house for that purpose.
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
Alternative explanation. Dogs face away from the sun while crapping.
Where is the raw data?
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
wtf can i say ?
im puzzled
Maybe they just don't like the sun in their eyes.
So which causes which?
He defecates in random directions.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
are in a dog poop?
If the deed is accurate to the nearest octant, that would be 3 bits for choice of one pole or 2 bits for choice of two poles.
I wonder if some breeds have more bits in their poop than others.
mmm ...
... but have a dog.
:-) ... just I need to give the dog some food and to wait.
If I am in a tropical forest, and I can't see where is the sun because so many trees and every direction is "green", have no GPS neither a device with WIFI
I am saved
Big Al says so.
I think my dog is broke, can I return it and get a new one?
I never knew this was a bug with my model until I just read this.
I was assured that these models were bug-free!
they won't poop on a magnetized carpet?
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Curious how strong the correlation is...the fact they don't report any quantitative results in their summary isn't very promising.
They really don't.
The poo is magnetic and thus easier to get rid of if standing in the right direction because of the magnetic pull?
If true. Standing in the right orientation would also prevent it from being pushed the wrong way up into the palate.
So stop dicking around already and put a dog in a Faraday cage to see if we can get a dog that doesn't poop!
You have to wonder at stories like this - are the researchers actually angling for an IgNobel, or do they have some other motive?
Of all time.
"To face death, that's nothing much. But to feel really stupid when you die, well, that would be insufferable."
Mod parent up! Informative, instead
Paul B.
Does that mean that if i put a bunch of Molybdenum magnets under the sidewalk, i could get the dogs confused enough to stop pooping there?
Or maybe the opposite effect...
Must be nothing about the NSA today.
...he said, "In Dog we trust".
Table-ized A.I.
What about cats?
Should have been published in "Annals in Zoology" instead
That's nothing. When I defecate my bolus aligns with the magnetic field, arching and coiling...
an ill wind that blows no good
my aviation canicraposcope has three pooping dogs mounted at right angles, unlike gyroscopic horizon it needs no electrical power supply, only Purina and prune juice.
Informative? It's speculation.
I put a magnet on an RC toy car and got my dog to draw pictures on the lawn
Table-ized A.I.
Where do they come up with funding for studies like this? Can I get some of this money? I could use it for my puppy who may need some surgery...
Instead of carrying a compass, just wait until your dog takes a dump.
I thought the kids' pics on the fridge looked crappy. Time to use masking tape instead.
Table-ized A.I.
Putting magnets next to a dog's bed to see if he'll turn in fewer circles before lying down.
I take pictures of our dog pooping and send them to my wife has pranks. "Hey, look at what the baby's doing. :dog shitting picture:" So, I went through them and sure enough she's either facing north or south in the backyard pinching a loaf. She maybe off by a 10 degrees, but never east or west with the same margin.
Chewbacon
The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.
I wonder how many scientists who happen to own a dog are now writing grant applications.
"the body being aligned along the North-south axis" - there are 2 ways to align the body that way. Which one do they prefer, if any?
(A draft of) the actual research article is freely available here. Key points not mentioned in the summary:
* the researchers concluded the magnetic field was responsible after observing the dogs lost their directional bias on days with geomagnetic storms, which is pretty cool IMHO
* the researchers did explicitly discuss bias due to the direction of the sun, and the measures they took to eliminate it from their study.
All in all, their findings are not to be taken as gospel (as always with original research), but if confirmed, they could spark a hunt for underlying biochemical mechanism.
Not only is it speculation, it is easily refuted speculation since time of day is considered in the actual article.
Capricorn-filled pisces of shit aside, dogs could men-taurus all on astronomical navigation. Siruisly.
Personally, I crap in line with the Earth's gravitational field. It tends to drop downwards.
Now all of the worthwhile questions have been answered.
But this was perhaps the first time that magnetic sensitivity was proven in dogs, and it was also the first time that a predictable behavioral reaction to the fluctuations in the magnetic field—magnetic storms, often as resulting from solar flares—was proven in a mammal.
I might be off topic here, but...
My house sits almost exactly diagonal to Earth's magnetic field, meaning that - unlike Solomon's Temple - only the corners of the house face North, East, South or West. I noticed that both of my kids wiggle around in their sleep in order to have their head face East. This happens in their beds, as well as on the floor. I told my wife what I thought, and we did some experiments:
Beds:
I moved both of the kids' beds to have the head face East, and both kids slept straight in their beds (they didn't wiggle out of that direction at all - we tested this for a few weeks. When I moved them back, the kids wiggled to have their heads face East again. So I moved the beds back to have the head face East and left them that way.
Floor:
On the weekend we would put a bunch of blankets down in the living room and pass out watching movies. The kids would always wiggle to have their heads facing East. I changed the blankets to have their heads facing West, but the kids would wiggle around to have their heads facing East.
I don't really find that either my wife or I wiggle around to face a certain direction, but I do find it easier to fall asleep if I move my couch to have my head facing East. Not sure if anyone else has ever had a similar experience.
Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
to accelerate?
It aint going to be me, no matter what the quantum states are.
So, does this mean I can put a magnet on a dog's collar and it will give him constipation?
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
I've been feeling pretty down about my crappy job all day long... and then I read about this really crappy job.
I feel a hell of a lot better now.
Now to add to the "If dogs ran the world" internet meme [*], if dogs could do architecture, the orientation of the bathroom would be decided first, before anything else.
(holy, err, shit: I looked up "feng shui bathroom" and not only do those clowns talk about bathrooms, the first hit says "Bathrooms do tend to leak energy, as well as easily accumulate lower vibrations". Appropriately, that load of, well, shit, comes from "about.com").
[*] OK OK I know that the Internet is really made of cats but before the feline coup d'etat the dogs had staked out their claim for the internet ur-meme.
70 dogs * 730 days = 51,100 dog-days.
Now, let's morph all the dogs into one dog's lifespan.
51,100 days / 5,582 urinations = 9.15 days / urination
51,100 days / 1,893 defecations = 27 days / defecation
I'll allow the [grad assistant | poor bastard] actually doing the research to miss a few, but NFW.
ceci n'est pas un sig.
Of Cows and Power Lines
Cattle seem to have an internal compass--one that's messed up by power lines
Posted 1 Jul 2009 | 4:00 GMT
IEEE Spectrum
A team of researchers from Germany and the Czech Republic has already discovered that, all factors being equal, cattle and two species of deer tend to align themselves along a north-south axis using some innate magnetic sense, and that this preferred alignment is disturbed when they graze under high-voltage power lines.
http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/the-smarter-grid/of-cows-and-power-lines
News for Turds; Shit that Smatters.
My pooch was always prone to dingleberries. Too much magnetic alignment, obviously.
My dog poops East/West. Seriously - I really know this.
Until additional studies pick up where this one left off, I think it's hard to call these findings solid evidence.
Mod me down, I shall become more off-topic than you could possibly imagine.
I have ten years of evidence of my Siberian husky crapping the back yard - I also have about five years of my catahoula crapping too.
They don't align - In fact, when the Husky is crapping facing the back fence, the catahoula has never aligned itself either assward or noseward when I've been watching..
I can provide video of both of them crapping in big piles in all directions. It's obvious by the findings that the people observing behavior don't have dogs or walk them. If the decide to differ, I'll hand them a couple of leashes, some dog crap bags and an actual compass. Walk my dogs and see that your study is without fact.
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
My dogs also spin in circles when they poop, just like a compass. Must be true.
Maybe they align with the direction of wind, not to get their sense of smell distracted by their own feces?
Crivens! I kicked meself in me own heid!
The original article (free to read): http://www.frontiersinzoology.com/content/10/1/80/abstract
soylentnews.org
Could perhaps Bee colony collapse disorder be caused by the sudden increase of wireless technology that's been built since the early 2000's? Perhaps the bees simply can't navigate their way back to the apiary because their internal compasses are scrambled? That might explain why we haven't found any toxins or diseases that cause it.
You insensitive clod ! and it creates all sorts of practical problems.
What happens in the Southern hemisphere?
So maybe it doesn't always roll downhill, maybe it rolls "down" south, having been pushed that direction. What direction would, say, a husky go when taken to the north pole (magnetic or spin-axis)?
...with over 40 years and +2500 dogs worth of experience. I usually have ~50 dogs in my kennel, and I do all my own kennel work. I've watched more dogs shit and scooped more poop than these researchers could ever hope to.
And I think they're losing sight of the sheer force of habit. About half of all dogs will always crap in the same spot, facing the same direction, and which direction depends mostly on their surroundings. Frex, most crap facing 'forward' (toward the door of their kennel, or if in a yard, toward the house), so naturally the daily act winds up aligned one way. Rotate the kennel 90 degrees and you'll rotate the direction the crapping dogs face with it.
The other half crap wherever they stop moving, which may be random or may be their notion of a convenient spot, but as a rule will still be facing toward their idea of what's public space'.
It's probably an aspect of the instinct to protect one's blind side, especially when vulnerable. But magnetic fields? They should try rotating their kennel. Seriously.
[My current kennel is a big square. So I get dogs facing four different directions to crap. Plus those that just go wherever the hell they stop moving.]
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
My dog is all into astrology; she poops when and where her horoscope tells her to.
unless it's the unlevel ground making it easier for them one way over the other, I DO see them shit facing South!
Have 2 dogs, sorry, this is utter crap. Dogs poop however they happen to be walking. Some of the weird ones will spin around a bit. It's more about location, not direction to dogs. It's like saying all people want their furniture arranged so the Chi flows correctly... it may be true for a few, but generally, they don't give a flying poop.
I suspect a GLITCH* in their research.
* a MAD Magazine sound effect word representing stepping in dog feces, from a late 1970's issue with sound effect stickers also having among others, THORT, SPLITCH, POIT, and SPLABADAP.
Put the dog with Santa at the North Pole and he'll have a perpetual engine.
Maybe they just don't want the sun in their eyes....
First cows, now dogs? What's next...
01/01/01