Study reveals dogs' magnetic sensitivity

A team of Czech and German researchers have found that, all else being equal, when a dog wants to go powder its rhinarium, it will tend to do so while standing in alignment with the earth’s magnetic field.

The two-year study, which involved 37 dog owners, 70 dogs, and 7,475 instances of the animals relieving themselves outside while their owners dutifully took notes, is the first demonstration of magnetic sensitivity in dogs.

The authors write that their findings, which appeared in the journal Frontiers in Zoology, “open new horizons for biomagnetic research”.

The scientists, who are affiliated with Germany’s University of Duisburg-Essen and the Czech University of Life Sciences, asked dog owners in the two countries to measure the alignment of  their dogs’ thoracic spines as the pets fed, rested, urinated and  defecated.

They found observations of the final two activities to be the most promising, noting that  excretion “seems to be least prone to be affected by the  surroundings”.

They then compared the data to the prevailing geomagnetic conditions at the time of each instance. The results: When our planet’s magnetic field is quiet, dogs are more likely to do their business while standing along a north-south axis. Indeed, the data suggested that the animals were actively avoiding the east-west axis.