Dogs and the Earth’s Magnetic Field
The study “Dogs are sensitive to small variations of the Earth’s magnetic field” was written by Vlastimil Hart et al. and argued that dogs were sensitive to the Earth’s magnetic field and could respond to natural fluctuations of geomagnetic conditions. The data gathered in the study supported its argument, but the researchers failed to refute an alternate explanation for the phenomenon that they studied. As a result, they did not definitively prove anything, and they ought to design and conduct another experiment to discount the alternative explanation.
In their study, the researchers tried to determine whether dogs could align themselves with the Earth’s magnetic field, reasoning that such an ability would demonstrate magnetosensitivity. The researchers spent eighteen months walking 70 dogs in open outdoor spaces and measuring their body alignments during defecation and urination with a hand-held compass. The data were then organized according to the magnetic field conditions when they were recorded, and the researchers discovered that most of the dogs would align themselves North-South during defecation under calm magnetic field conditions. This behavior was negated when magnetic field conditions were unstable. The researchers argued the dogs weren’t aligning themselves to avoid sunlight in their eyes while defecating as they were positioned North-South under quiet magnetic field conditions irrespective of the time of day or the month, and it was more likely that they were walked in cloudy weather than sunny weather. The authors then concluded that dogs were magnetosensitive and could predictably respond to natural fluctuations.
The study’s conclusions were not convincing. It is true that the data suggests a correlation between calm magnetic field activity and body alignment in defecating dogs, but the authors did not convincingly invalidate the possibility of the dogs defecating in a certain direction in order to avoid being blinded by the sun. They tried to gloss over this by claiming that there was only a 33% chance that the dogs were walked sunny weather based on the average annual amount of sunshine at their locations. This does not prove anything; if the researchers wanted to make a convincing argument, they should have only examined the data collected on cloudy days in their study, which would eliminate the uncontrolled variable. However, it seems like the authors neglected to ask their volunteers to note the weather conditions each time they collected data, so this alternative explanation cannot be definitively ruled out. The researchers should conduct another experiment that controls the sun variable, and they should also get researchers around the world to participate in the study as well to prove that this phenomenon is not unique to the study’s location.
The study attempted to show that dogs could sense the Earth’s magnetic field. While the data from the study supports this conclusion, the researchers failed to refute the alternative possibility of the behavior of the dogs being influenced by the sun, so this study is inconclusive. The researchers must conduct more experiments if they wish to conclusively prove their case.
Literature Cited:
Hart. V, et al. (2013). Dogs are sensitive to small variations of the Earth’s magnetic field.
Frontiers in Zoology, 10:80. doi:10.1186/1742-9994-10-80
