Do dogs possess a poop compass? (And other weird science questions)

Alan Boyle, Science Editor NBC News
03 Jan 2014

Does an internal compass dictate how dogs line up when they defecate? How do you figure that out? And why would you want to?

Such are the questions you get into when addressing the weirdest subjects of scientific research.

"If something's not familiar to you, it's going to seem weird. But a big part of a scientist's job is to study and make sense of what's not familiar. They focus your attention on it, and you think, 'Whoa, that's really interesting!' At that moment, 'weird' and 'interesting' are exactly the same thing," said Marc Abrahams, who collects weird science as the editor of the Annals of Improbable Research and the impresario behind the annual Ig Nobel Prizes.

Abrahams is due to discuss the philosophy behind science that makes you laugh, and then makes you think, during Friday's edition of "Virtually Speaking Science." The hourlong talk show, hosted by yours truly, airs at 8 p.m. ET Friday on BlogTalkRadio and in the Second Life virtual world.

This show celebrates the Ig Nobels and our own Weird Science Awards, plus the latest in offbeat research — such as that study on doo-doo directionality. The paper, published online in a peer-reviewed journal titled Frontiers in Zoology, was featured this week on Abrahams' website, Improbable.com. It could end up as a future Ig Nobel and Weirdie winner.

"It certainly is a contender for a prize," Abrahams told NBC News. "because it's funny and because it gets people talking about the details — whether you're a dog lover, a dog hater, or possibly a dog."

The straight scoop

The dog-poop experiments, conducted by Czech and German researchers, built upon previous studies suggesting that cattle, deer, foxes and other types of mammals sometimes line up preferentially along Earth's magnetic field lines. Such behavior hints at a mechanism behind the animals' sense of direction.

The researchers reasoned that dogs should have a similar magnetic sense. They said "a discovery of magnetoreception in dogs would open totally new horizons for magnetobiological research," because dogs are already widely used in behavioral and biomedical experiments.

So they took 70 dogs, representing 37 different breeds, on a wide variety of outings over the course of two years — and watched how the animals lined up when they did their business. They collected directional data (and, one assumes, the dog poop) associated with 1,893 defecations and 5,582 urinations. Then they analyzed the distribution of compass directions.

At first, the distribution looked random. But then the researchers reprocessed the data, looking specifically at periods when Earth's magnetic field was "quiet" and not knocked slightly out of alignment. When they did that, the results were more significant. The dogs favored either facing north or facing south when pooping. When it came to peeing, males preferred a northwest heading, while females stuck with the north-south axis.

Does it pass the sniff test?

The researchers dismiss alternate explanations for the dogs' orientation — for example, that they were aligning themselves to keep the sun out of their eyes. But they confess it's not clear why the dogs lined up the way they did.

... [Some more discussion at the link.]

Obviously, a few responses from our members' observations of which way their dogs (and other family members?) poop would be a significant contribution to this important scientific question.

Also of interest would be whether improper geomagnetic alignment of the litter box might affect our cat who makes elaborate rearrangements of the litter in the box, then poops over the side of the box on the floor.

A separate category likely will be required for weiner dogs, should Amos wish to contribute.

John