Dogs Poo Northwards!

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That's right folks. It's not just lame roleplay characters who instinctively know which way is north.


The next time you’re lost in the wilderness, trying to figure out which way is north, forget about moss growing on the side of a tree. Just pay attention to how your dog poops. He’s a regular canine crap compass.

The basic finding of two years’ worth of study by a group of German and Czech researchers was this: When a dog poops, it’s likely to align its spine along a north- south axis.

To those of us who own dogs, it doesn’t come as a complete surprise. We spend a lot of time watching our pets, and we know that there’s definitely something going on. It’s why when we walk our dogs, plastic bag in hand, we often can be heard muttering, “Come on. Poop already. What are you waiting for?”

They may be waiting for their inner GPS to recalculate.

“There are anecdotal reports of their extraordinary homing abilities (just remember Lassie come home) and there is also a well-known common behavior — circling before excretion or before sleeping — which is enigmatic and for which there is no scientific explanation.”

To find out, volunteers enlisted 70 different dogs. They observed 1,893 instances of defecation and 5,582 instances of urination. They made sure the dogs were off-leash, out of their back yards, and away from power lines and buildings.

What the researchers found was that in periods of magnetic stability, dogs were more likely to align themselves along a north-south axis while doing their business, with a preference for facing north.

Hynek thinks the magnetic ability might be connected with territory marking. “A dog who is outdoors, out of his backyard, marks his home range or an unfamiliar region,” he wrote. “Perhaps you have also noticed that the dog knows well (and can remember) not only where he hid a bone but also where are his marking cornerstones. He has a mental map of his home range or creates such a map whenever in an unfamiliar region. Our hypothesis is that he uses these short stops to store the location (‘coordinates’) of marking cornerstones in his memory. Doing so, and/or calibrating his magnetic compass, is probably easier for him when being aligned with the magnetic field.”


Use this in roleplays, my friends.
 
Now my want of a dog has intensified as if it wasn't bad enough already. thanks for sharing that.
 
Lol xD good advice indeed. I don't need a map then. To bad I got no dog in my RP's .. Could've been useful.:)
 
I will use this for my role-play! My characters are lost!!
 
Great. Now that our dog finally has some amount of usefulness, we're less likely to kill and eat him during a time of starvation when the apocalypse arrives. Only slightly less likely, anyway...
 
Woman bread? o_o
 
*takes all the woman bread and locks it in his pantry*

Mwha! >8]
 
I am disappointed by the lack of replies to my fecal revelations.
 
There's lack of replies because it's old news on the internet.
 
-__-

*stops posting in General too*
 
http://www.frontiersinzoology.com/content/pdf/1742-9994-10-80.pdf

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@Kura You learn something every day!
 
No, dogs poo @Dawn

Haha, get it?
 
Everybody poops, sometimes shit is useful.
 
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