Magnetic Merde

For many years scientists have studied the canny abilities of migrating birds for finding their way to their summer or winter habitats. How can a bird depart from a certain lake in Ontario in October, find its way to a particular forest clearing in Guatemala, and return to the same Canadian lake next spring? And then get back to that same Central American forest next fall, even though it may fly a different route?

This is an amazing feat! Birds use various guides during their migratory trip—including orienting themselves to the sun and stars, as well using familiar navigation aids such as land formations and large bodies of water.

Another major mechanism that birds use to navigate is an ability to sense the Earth's magnetic field and use it as a north-south guide to orient themselves. This skill is called “magnetoreception,” and it's not solely the talent of migrating birds. A wide range of critters is known to be able to detect the Earth's magnetic field, mostly for the purpose of finding the correct direction for traveling around their far more limited home territory—animals such as bacteria, fruit flies, honey bees, turtles, and even wolves.

Scientists are actively investigating animals' sense of magnetoreception—learning more every day about this phenomenon. Perhaps these investigations took a bit of a digression recently when researchers in Germany and the Czech Republic published results of a two-year study which discovered that dogs prefer to defecate when their bodies are aligned in a north-south direction. That's almost as fascinating as what birds do! The scientists followed 37 different breeds of dogs around, waiting for them to poop, and recorded their orientation with a compass. Most of them (the dogs, not the scientists) preferred to align their bodies with the Earth's magnetic field when relieving themselves.

When hearing this amazing finding, a Frenchman might shout, “Merde! Look at how that dog aims itself!” (Merde is a vulgar French word for shit. Victor Hugo once proclaimed merde to be “perhaps the finest word ever spoken by a Frenchman.”)

I believe that much more research on this scatological subject is in order. Dogs cannot be trying to navigate to Central America when they take a dump, so why do they shun an east-west orientation when they crap? Should we try to catch up with this exciting research in America or leave it to the Germans and Czechs to work it out? Should the good old US of A rise to the occasion and attempt to surpass these Europeans in this important area of research? Fascinating. But I fear that most people would respond with, “Who gives a shit?”