Being able to feel Earth's magnetic field sounds like a pretty awesome superpower, but dogs apparently rely on this skill to do normal stuff like taking a dump on your neighbor's lawn.



This strange phenomenon was discovered by a team of Czech and German scientists over the course of two years. After going to through approximately 1,893 piles of poop, they found that dogs are sensitive to small variations in the Earth's magnetic field.

Their research revealed that during times of "calm electromagnetic weather," dogs consistently choose to crap while facing north or south, while actively avoiding crapping when facing east or west.

As for why these dogs do it, the scientists still haven't quite figured it out:
It is still enigmatic why the dogs do align at all, whether they do it 'consciously' (i.e., whether the magnetic field is sensorial perceived (the dogs 'see,' 'hear' or 'smell' the compass direction or perceive it as a haptic stimulus) or whether its reception is controlled on the vegetative level (they 'feel better/more comfortable or worse/less comfortable' in a certain direction).
So the next time you take Fido out for his morning walk, be sure to bring along a compass just in case.

[Rawstory]