While combing through research journals and papers to find interesting topics to write on sometimes I come across one that I just have to share. Even though it may seem there isn’t much that applies to getting healthy, or even to people at all. I’ve reviewed papers on heart disease, outdoor play, quitting smoking, healthy eating, but sometimes you just have to go in a different direction. Stick with me and you may learn something after all.

This is from a research paper that investigated if dogs align themselves with the magnetic fields on earth to poop. Yes someone really funded a study on dog poop and body position. The study followed a group of owners and about 70 dogs for a year and a half. The owners recorded the direction the dog was facing while they pooped along with other basic info like time of day. The researchers took that data and combined it with info about magnetic storms, weather, etc from the same time period. (Hey this is a serious study on poop.)

What they found was that while pooping, dogs prefer to align themselves in a North South direction. If there are magnetic disturbances like solar storms it would disrupt their orientation and their position becomes more random. This alignment also applies to female dogs while peeing, presumably due to similar postures. Male dogs followed no pattern when peeing, as anyone who owns a dog could have told you. No extensive research needed for that one.  

Why dogs do this is still up for debate and open to interpretation. Some theories the researchers suggest was that dogs need to “reset” their internal compass occasionally. It is known that dogs have very strong homing abilities. Their cousins the Wolf have territory ranges of many miles, showing a strong sense of direction and internal mapping. Part of this homing ability comes from the ability to detect magnetic fields, just like a compass does, to determine direction. Many animals do this. Birds use the same techniques when migrating as do whales. Other studies have shown a change in magnetic fields disrupts this navigation tool causing birds to fly erratically and possibly playing a role in whale beachings.

The magnetic fields have also been shown to affect humans. (See I told you I could bring this around to people and health.) Studies have shown changes in blood pressure with changes in magnetic fields and even changes in suicide rates. So magnetic fields have physiologic and mental effects on people. While we can’t control the magnetic properties and fields of our planet and the sun, we are around many other magnetic fields we can control. Electrical power lines, cell phones, wireless routers all produce weak magnetic fields similar to the type affecting dogs in this study. What specific effects they have on us are still being debated. With the current research I’d say they have some effect, how detrimental this effect is remains to be seen.

So before you take the dog out you may want to check if there is any disruption in the magnetic fields to know if you will be out there longer as your pup tries to align themselves while they poop.

By Dr Scott Szela

Frontiers in Zoology 2013, 10:80