[HN Gopher] Dogs poop in alignment with Earth's magnetic field, ...
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Dogs poop in alignment with Earth's magnetic field, study finds
(2014)
Author : pionerkotik
Score : 277 points
Date : 2020-02-08 16:18 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.pbs.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.pbs.org)
| k__ wrote:
| What are the applications if we would breed dogs based on that
| "skill"?
| Waterluvian wrote:
| We could breed homing dogs that can find their way home by
| following the treasure trail they left behind.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Well they have a good sense of smell already so the magnetic
| aspect probably wouldn't add much.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Instead of packing a heavy compass when you go hiking, just
| bring a dog!
| shd4 wrote:
| God damnit, that made me laugh. Beautiful creatures.
| polynomial wrote:
| Surprised to see this on pbs (then again, not) but a great
| example of anti-science being buoyed by a sea of epistemic
| uncertainty. Hopefully we'll being hearing more about this study
| come September at the Ig-Nobel awards, in the category of best
| p-hacking.
| gnicholas wrote:
| *pee-hacking
| jwmerrill wrote:
| This study hinges on binning by variability of the magnetic
| field. It's important to realize how small these variations are.
| The authors measure variation in the field direction in
| "percent", but the units are arch minutes (1/60 of a degree in
| compass heading) per minute of time [0]. Calling this a
| percentage is kind of an odd pun on two meanings of the word
| "minute".
|
| According to the authors' own interpretation, variation of 2 arch
| minutes of heading per minute of time is enough to destroy the
| claimed effect. In other words, they're talking about a 0.03
| degree change in direction in the amount of time it takes a dog
| to poop.
|
| Perhaps you believe dogs are sensitive to magnetic fields, but
| can you really believe that they are also sensitive to such tiny
| relative variations in magnetic fields? Much more sensitive than
| a handheld compass?
|
| I also agree with the general criticisms about p-hacking, but I
| think it's worth having some sense of the actual size of the
| thing the authors are talking about, and how implausible it all
| is, apart from any details of the statistics.
|
| [0] See figure 4 in
| https://frontiersinzoology.biomedcentral.com/track/pdf/10.11...
| geuis wrote:
| I'm a real skeptic on this. I've had dogs my whole life and they
| just shit any which way they want.
|
| There have been no follow up studies that I can find to replicate
| this "experiment".
|
| Searching around just finds lots of duplicate stories in the old
| echo chamber based on the original paper.
| eganist wrote:
| https://frontiersinzoology.biomedcentral.com/track/pdf/10.11...
|
| The dataset seems to be robust. Would be even more interesting
| if reproduced, but I'd be surprised if someone faked nearly
| 7500 datapoints for the sake of giving dogs a magnetic sense.
| codazoda wrote:
| Same. Reminds me of the study on stork vs human baby births.
| That was proven wrong shortly thereafter.
| huffmsa wrote:
| Do they though? Take a compass out with you next time.
|
| Mine almost always face mostly north or mostly south, now that
| I'm thinking about it.
|
| And I'm pretty sure the dogs out my apartment window face
| mostly N/S. Will observe. There's a busy road right there so
| they might face it some
| Ididntdothis wrote:
| I think it depends on the dog. Mine circles several times until
| she has found the perfect spot. Some fosters we had would just
| throw down wherever. I'll definitely watch the direction next
| time.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| When I saw this, my first thought was that circling could
| allow magnetic alignment.
| mthoms wrote:
| They do the same before lying down. It's never been
| understood exactly why that is.
| dx87 wrote:
| The reason I've read is that it's a leftover from when
| they lived in the wild, and it would help make sure they
| don't lay down on top of something dangerous, like a
| snake or ant colony. It would also make since to do it
| before pooping since they're going to be in a vulnerable
| position.
| jackcosgrove wrote:
| Dogs circling to poop, puts a new spin on the idea of the
| lodestone.
| alexilliamson wrote:
| I just want to say that these are some of the most fun comments
| I've seen in a while on an HN thread. Thanks everyone and make
| sure your toilets are aligned!
| jimnotgym wrote:
| I think the authors need a reminder that coprology does not imply
| causation.
| remcob wrote:
| You don't need any magnetic field to distinguish the north-south
| direction. It is simply the direction shadows are cast when the
| sun is at its brightest. Consequently, plants will have adjusted
| to it, providing many (subconscious) clues. The sun makes things
| strongly non-isotropic, and these clues are everywhere; in the
| light, in the plants, in the wind, in sound, in urban planning,
| etc.
|
| I expect most of the anecdotal 'evidence' to be explained by
| this. What would compel me is if randomly changing the magnetic
| field correlates with the observations, which is what this study
| seems to have done.
| [deleted]
| MrEldritch wrote:
| hm. upon reading the paper, this is sounding _very_ suspicious.
|
| > The study was truly blind. Although the observers were
| acquainted with our previous studies on magnetic alignment in
| animals and could have consciously or unconsciously biased the
| results, no one, not even the coordinators of the study,
| hypothesized that expression of alignment could have been
| affected by the geomagnetic situation, and particularly by such
| subtle changes of the magnetic declination. The idea leading to
| the discovery of the correlation emerged after sampling was
| closed and the first statistical analyses (with rather negative
| results, cf.Figure 1) had been performed.
|
| Like, am I reading this wrong, or are they straight-up saying "we
| couldn't achieve statistical significance on our original
| hypothesis, so we just went fishing for correlations until one of
| them came up significant, and it turned out to be magnetic
| declination"?
| rossdavidh wrote:
| Well, it would be p-hacking if you tried 1,032 different
| hypotheses until you got one that passed your threshold.
| There's quite a lot of scientific history (e.g. Kepler's
| discovery that planets went in elliptical orbits) that would
| have to be thrown out if you decided you could never use data
| for anything other than the original hypothesis. Kepler didn't
| even collect the data, much less collect it with the idea that
| the planetary orbits were elliptical.
|
| Having said that, the results smells (pun intended) bad, just
| because I cannot think of any plausible reason for a non-
| migrating animal to align with the magnetic field, when
| defecating or at any other time.
| [deleted]
| monocasa wrote:
| I mean, humans can detect magnetic fields as well. There's
| even languages without relative egocentric positions like
| left/right, only north south east west. Given all that, I
| don't think it's out there that dogs sense it and like being
| aligned when they're trying to poop.
|
| https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/03/humans-other-
| animals...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guugu_Yimithirr_language
| azernik wrote:
| The predominance of geographic directions in Guugu
| Yimithirr has nothing to do with magnetic sensing; humans
| know what north and south are from sun positions and
| memory.
| MrEldritch wrote:
| This is true, and a valid point. The way they phrased it does
| make me feel more than a little suspicious, nonetheless.
|
| (Besides, there's some other oddity there, like that
| apparently the alignment only matters when the magnetic field
| is _calm_ )
| austinjp wrote:
| You're right to still feel suspicious. Who's to say they
| didn't try 1,000 different post-hoc ideas? They declare
| only one, the may have been others. I'd be looking for
| preceding research and any published protocols, if I wasn't
| on mobile and didn't think it would be fruitless.
| petschge wrote:
| When the magnetic field is non-calm that is probably due to
| a space weather event that is geo-effective and inducing
| large currents in the ground. The local magnetic field an
| then be significantly distorted depending on local
| conductivity. So to me that is not an oddity.
| jb775 wrote:
| > any plausible reason for a non-migrating animal to align
| with the magnetic field, when defecating or at any other
| time.
|
| I got my dog a few years back when she was just a pup. Over
| the years, she's done things that she was never taught how to
| do (swim, hunt, bury her food), she just new how to do them
| instinctually. I believe something like this falls under that
| category.
|
| And for the record, she took a crap this morning and was
| pointing directly north/south.
| Xylakant wrote:
| > any plausible reason for a non-migrating animal to align
| with the magnetic field, when defecating or at any other
| time.
|
| Snow foxes seem to hunt better when oriented in direction of
| the magnetic north.
|
| https://m.phys.org/news/2011-01-predation-foxes-aided-
| earth-... https://youtu.be/D2SoGHFM18I
| lonelappde wrote:
| Yes, that's a straight up admission of p-hacking.
|
| Also, the weasel word "truly" signifies deceit.
| eganist wrote:
| I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, though my
| opinion might've been influenced somewhat by 538.
|
| https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/science-isnt-broken/
| ncmncm wrote:
| Why not? Science that insists on hypotheses written down
| beforehand is cargo-cult science. Observation is the first and
| most productive science. Double-blind experiments are to cement
| gains.
| stygiansonic wrote:
| You seem to be under the impression that a study like this
| gives a hard "yes/no" answer as to whether some hypothesis is
| true. That is not the case, nor is it ever the case with most
| studies like these. Instead, you need to do some sort of
| _statistical hypothesis test_.
|
| As other comments have pointed out, once you start testing
| multiple hypothesis on the same dataset, you cannot apply the
| same significance threshold that you would if you had just
| begun with a single hypothesis before observing the data.
| Instead, you need to apply some sort of correction that takes
| into account the number of hypothesis being tested:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family-
| wise_error_rate#Control...
| lonelappde wrote:
| You are confusing hypothesis generation with hypothesis
| testing. Both are science, but only one is a reliable way to
| determine truth.
| throwawayhhakdl wrote:
| Probable claims. Not truth.
| BenoitEssiambre wrote:
| Not if you want to claim statistical significance. The math
| behind this method is based on defining the hypothesis before
| seeing the data (and even then it's usually very weak
| evidence of a tiny signal within the noise).
| MrEldritch wrote:
| basically, because once you start trying multiple hypotheses
| on the same dataset, the math used to determine "is this
| conclusion real, or am I just fooling myself" begins to break
| down.
|
| The statistical significance threshold usually used is
| p<0.05, meaning that something is (generally, this is
| beginning to change since the replication crisis) considered
| to be a real discovery if it has less than a 1/20 chance of
| being a false positive under the chosen model.
|
| As soon as you start trying _multiple_ hypotheses, then that
| 1 /20 chance of being a false positive begins to become
| meaningless. If you can just keep rolling d20s until one of
| them comes up with a critical hit, then you can easily
| generate false positives that still look very robust.
|
| This is exactly the sort of bad science - p-hacking, fishing
| expeditions, and the garden of forking paths - that led to
| the replication crisis. (And that makes sense, as this paper
| is from 2013, and predates the widespread discovery of the
| crisis)
| ncmncm wrote:
| p<0.05 is also cargo-cult science, and is much more
| responsible for the replication crisis -- along with biased
| sampling (pop. 18-22 yo US psych students).
|
| It is also why we see repeated, spurious insistence that
| anti-depressants don't do anything.
|
| Experiment design is a subtle skill.
| dodobirdlord wrote:
| The math continues to work out as long as you use the right
| approach. You have to collect twice as much data, and then
| set half of it aside at random without examining it. Then
| you can do whatever perverse p-hacking multi-modeling
| curve-fitting whatever to the half you kept until you reach
| a hypothesis, then check it against the half you set aside
| to recover the statistical significance you lost by using
| techniques that may have overfit the first half.
| Unsurprisingly, the math works out because this approach is
| isomorphic to collecting the first half, studying it to
| form a hypothesis, then conducting a proper pre-
| hypothesized experiment to collect the second half.
| Validation via holdout sets is the same approach used in
| machine learning and elsewhere to prevent models from
| overfitting data.
| MrEldritch wrote:
| This is true! I was trying to simplify things a bit for a
| basic explanation, but I fear I oversimplified. I just
| meant that the _generally used_ math breaks down; if you
| 're aware of the problem, you can correct for it, but
| very often people don't.
| ORioN63 wrote:
| Thanks! For someone that didn't understand why this was
| considered p-hacking, that made a whole lot of sense.
| yodon wrote:
| No. If you collect data and then hunt for "significant"
| results in it you are guaranteed to find spurious results.
| This is one of the most basic truths of statistics.
| shanemhansen wrote:
| xkcd explains it better than I can. Basically if you pick p
| values that give 95% certainty 20 times you're probably going
| to "discover" at least one falsehood.
|
| https://xkcd.com/882/
| marcosdumay wrote:
| P-hacking only apply to proofs. This study does two things, it
| falsifies a previous hypothesis fair and square, with no
| p-hacking, and it postulates another hypothesis, an activity
| where the concept of p-hacking does not even apply.
|
| The only wrong party here is the one that reported the study
| found something.
| Reason077 wrote:
| > _" The study was truly blind."_
|
| I'd argue the study would only be truly blind if the dogs were
| blind. If blind dogs also oriented themselves north-south, then
| that would prove that they weren't using visual cues for
| alignment, such as the position of the sun.
| philosopher1234 wrote:
| You can feel the heat of the sun
| metabagel wrote:
| Instant Ig Nobel finalist.
|
| https://www.improbable.com/ig-about/
| ebg13 wrote:
| 2013/2014
| archsurface wrote:
| I don't have dogs, but I see people walking their dogs, and they
| don't give a damn which way they're facing. Tree, bush, wall,
| open pavement - all fine. They walk, they break, they walk.
| tomas_aspre wrote:
| Hope this gains traction - imagine the societal consequences of
| optimizing human magnetic alignment in city planning and
| building/room layout.
|
| Also interesting and relevant:
|
| Magnetic alignment contributes to difficulty falling asleep
| (north-south alignment is best)
| [https://www.researchgate.net/publication/280093617_The_Relat...]
|
| Grazing cattle align on north-south axis
| [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23700176]
| yoavm wrote:
| Is it just me or is it really weird to start a scientific paper
| with "sleep has been one of God's most precious blessings since
| human's existence and it is vital for both body and soul"?
| schoen wrote:
| It reminds me of a line in "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner":
|
| https://www.litscape.com/author/Samuel_Taylor_Coleridge/The_.
| ..
| trehalose wrote:
| I'm extremely skeptical of the study you linked about magnetic
| alignment and sleep latency.
|
| Just looking at table 6 (the only table related to the only
| association stated significant), the stats for South-North
| sleepers look noticeably better than the stats for North-South
| sleepers. I'm no statistician, but just look at it. The South-
| North sleepers sample, versus the North-South (supposedly best)
| sleepers, has proportionately three times more people
| experiencing zero days weekly of difficulty getting to sleep,
| two-thirds as many people having even one day of difficulty,
| two-thirds as many people having two days of difficulty... and
| 50% more people having three days of difficulty, but even then,
| we're talking only four people each among a group of 47 vs a
| group of 35. Again, I'm no statistician, but does that last and
| smallest column overshadow the three much bigger columns with
| the opposite trend, to the point of being a 1 in 1000 result
| assuming the null hypothesis?
|
| Furthermore, the sleep measures were self-reported, through the
| Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Inventory (PSQI), which I quote:
|
| >In Iran, Tehran psychiatry institute assessed the validity and
| reliability of the Farsi version of this questionnaire with
| 89.6% for sensitivity and 86.5% for specificity.
|
| Did the math behind this eye-catching <0.001 p-value take into
| account that the questionnaire used was measured to have a
| 10.4% false negative rate and a 13.5% false positive rate? I
| find it hard to believe. But I'd love to see a statistician who
| actually knows how to interpret these numbers tell me that I'm
| wrong.
| c3534l wrote:
| Turn it into an experiment and I'll believe it. See if you can
| control where dogs poop with an elecromagnet.
| salawat wrote:
| I'm kind of skeptical on this one.
|
| I find that there are far more factors that tend to take priority
| in the direction our dog relieves herself. Oncoming/prevailing
| wind, rain, whether she was spooked in a particular direction or
| not, amount of exertion (was she running or walking before the
| urge hit), ambient noise, presence of echo, presence of other
| animals and whether or not she feels safe around them.
|
| I mean, it's a nice sample size, and I suppose the data is fun,
| but a follow up should probably be done taking into account
| magnetic north is currently hauling ass to the geospatial west
| and see if dog alignment changes with that.
|
| Furthermore, where are the instances of dogs forming defecation
| circles around MRI's?
|
| No defecate based outlines of magnetic field lines, no dice in my
| humble opinion. Yes. I know, I'm a stick in the mud; but if
| you're going to claim something like this, that's actually a
| fairly easy way to confirm it. Just head to a radiology clinic
| with your dog and have them do their business. You should see
| wildly divergent behavior over time, because they aim to keep
| those machines operating regularly, which should definitely be
| able to overwhelm the Earth's ambient magnetic field in close
| proximity.
| lonelappde wrote:
| Considering all the cases that were excluded, and the imprecision
| inherent in measuring poop direction, N is pretty low here.
| j-james wrote:
| Related: in 2008 the German University of Duisburg-Essen did a
| study on cattle based off of Google Earth images, with similar
| results.
|
| The researchers also did field studies of deer in the Czech
| Republic. They found that the vast majority (well over 2/3)
| aligned themselves along a north/south or south/north meridian
| [1].
|
| edit: it seems tomas_aspre found the actual publication [2].
|
| [1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7575459.stm
|
| [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23700176
| cumunism wrote:
| my dog cares that his back isn't facing the open, that is about
| it. lol "study"
| lonelappde wrote:
| You could answer this research question much more accurately by
| building an app and collecting data from users mobile devices.
| xenospn wrote:
| Anecdotally, I actually tested this one time. I pulled out my
| phone and launched the compass app. My dog was PERFECTLY aligned
| and was facing north while pooping. Never tested it again, tho.
| But if it was a fluke, it was a very impressive one.
| cgriswald wrote:
| Did they have a control group pooping inside a Faraday cage?
| unsrsly wrote:
| Fun fact: Faraday cages don't block low frequency magnetic
| fields. But mu metal and active magnetic shielding can :)
| [deleted]
| blazespin wrote:
| To be fair, this is pretty common in animals.
| https://www.momtastic.com/webecoist/2008/09/18/animal-magnet...
|
| It's quite possible.
| nate_meurer wrote:
| I have four dogs, and I watch them poop every day. For some
| reason they have to slowly turn lots of circles before they're
| satisfied they have the best pooping position, and if the sun is
| out, they almost always settle on a position where they're not
| facing directly into the sun.
|
| Makes sense from a practical viewpoint. You're more vulnerable to
| attack when you're pooping out in the open, and even moreso if
| the sun is right in your eyes.
|
| To the extent that more pooping is done near the middle of the
| day, north-south pooping orientation would naturally dominate. No
| need for a sixth "compass" sense.
| amelius wrote:
| > and if the sun is out, they almost always settle on a
| position where they're not facing directly into the sun.
|
| The (linked) article says:
|
| > (...) This calls for necessity to test whether the dog
| alignment is not actually influenced primarily by time of the
| day and most probably by position of the sun on the sky. We
| can, however, exclude this alternative. (...)
| wyldfire wrote:
| > north-south pooping orientation would naturally dominate. No
| need for a sixth "compass" sense.
|
| What if it's both? Compass sense helps align them north/south
| for better vantage even when the clouds obscure the sun at the
| start of defecation/urination.
|
| I skimmed the study and did not see anything regarding having
| controlled for day/night/cloud cover.
| ehsankia wrote:
| That's a hypothesis that can be checked. Go over the data and
| splice it by time of day, or rather position of the sun given
| the location/time/day of year. Then you should see a much
| higher correlation when the suns out than when pooping at
| night.
| blazespin wrote:
| from the paper --
| https://frontiersinzoology.biomedcentral.com/track/pdf/10.11...
|
| Typically, the daily declination comprises westwardshifts in
| the morning and eastward-shifts in the afternoon, while the
| magnetic field is rather stable at night [21,22]. This calls
| for necessity to test whether the dog alignment is not actually
| influenced primarily by time of the day and most probably by
| position of the sun on the sky. We can, however, exclude this
| alternative. First, days when the magnetic field parameters
| change erratically and unpredictably (i.e., magnetic storms)
| are quite frequent. These changes have been well studied by
| others and are described in the literature (cf. [21,22] for
| reviews). Second, the data collection was not biased to either
| morning or afternoon (Table 8). Third, periods of sampling
| under conditions of quiet magnetic field were rather evenly
| distributed in the course of the day. Fourth, and most
| importantly, alignment during excreting was apparent under
| conditions of quiet magnet field, irrespective of the time of
| day or month. Time of day per se was not a reliable predictor
| of expression of alignment (Figure 2, Tables 3, 9). Fifth,
| generally, there are on average 1,450 sunshine hours per year
| at maximum in the Czech Republic and in Germany, on localities
| where measurements were done. Even if we would assume that
| these sunshine hours were evenly distributed over the daylight
| period and the year (as our observations were), there would
| only be a probability of 33% that the observation was made when
| the sun was visible. Hence, with high probability (67%) most
| walks during the daylight period were made when it was cloudy.
|
| Last but not least, the argument that the dogs might orient
| with regard to sun position so that they turn with their back
| to the sun in order to avoid dazzling by sunshine during such a
| sensitive and vulnerable act as excretion can be questioned.
| This argument is not plausible for urine marking, which is a
| brief act. We doubt that a dog that cares of not being attacked
| would always make sure to be turned away from the sun. The dog
| will likely look in that direction from where danger can most
| probably be expected - and this is for sure not always the
| direction away from the sun. In contrast to a human, the dog is
| relying also on its nose and its ears (in some breeds even more
| than on its eyes) when monitoring its surroundings - so we may
| expect that the dog heads with its nose and pinnae against the
| wind or in the direction of interest. Directing the pinnae and
| the nose may take priority over eyes. One can also often
| observe that dogs (especially during defecation) align in a
| certain direction, which is actually a different one from the
| direction of interest and they turn their head then in that
| other direction. Also we have to take into account that dogs
| are smaller than humans, they look at a different angle over
| the horizon and even in situations when we are dazzled, they
| might be not. Quite important: note also that the preference is
| axial - there are many cases when the dog actually looks
| southwards. There is no evidence for shift of the alignment
| axis during the day.
| jshevek wrote:
| That's an awful lot of unsubstantiated speculation. This has
| the vibe of a writer that has a foregone conclusion which
| they seek to reach.
| modzu wrote:
| that is.. a stretch. so they didnt actually look at sunlight
| hours they simply assumed the probability from the
| distribution of the data?? both hypotheses are plausible
| (sunlight vs magnetic fields) but this reads like data
| fitting rather than treating each possibility equally blind.
| where was it published?
| nate_meurer wrote:
| Yes, I read the whole thing when it came out years ago. I
| remain thoroughly unconvinced. Back when this study came out,
| pop-sci magazines and websites reported it uncritically. But
| it was also a much less cynical time, before the
| reproducibility crisis really took hold.
|
| Aside from the blatant and unapologetic p-hacking, there are
| some other flaws of data gathering and analysis that make
| their conclusions dubious. For example, note that your first
| paragraph above seems to admit that the actual presence of
| direct sunlight was not recorded in the raw data. They only
| figure in a statistical inference based on average hours of
| sun in a locale.
|
| Rather than copy-pasting myself, here's a better critique
| from 2014 with good explanations of the study's problems:
|
| http://skeptvet.com/Blog/2014/01/do-dogs-line-themselves-
| up-...
| blazespin wrote:
| Maybe you should have started with that, rather than
| anecdotal evidence. I agree as a case study of potential
| p-hacking, it's pretty illustrative. Not sure if it's
| failed p-hacking though. For example -
|
| High school students, but did make it into a journal ..
|
| Dogs excreted with the body aligned along the North-South
| axis, but when exposed to small bar magnets, significantly
| changed their directional positions. The study suggests
| that dogs are able to recognize MF.
|
| Additional value of this research is that the data were
| collected by local high school students, which required
| collaboration with teachers and their parents. We think
| that this idea has great potential and can be developed at
| a global scale and to become a citizen-science project
| involving other high school pupils and their families.
|
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1558
| 7...
|
| Dogs can be trained to find a bar magnet
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6301327/
|
| We excluded visual cues and used control trials with food
| treats to test for the role of olfaction in finding the
| magnet. While 13 out of 16 dogs detected the magnet
| significantly above chance level (53-73% success rate),
| none of the dogs managed to do so in finding the food treat
| (23-40% success rate). In a replication of the experiment
| under strictly blinded conditions five out of six dogs
| detected the magnet above chance level (53-63% success
| rate). These experiments support the existence of a
| magnetic sense in domestic dogs. Whether the sense enables
| dogs to perceive MFs as weak as the Earth's MF, if they use
| it for orientation, and by which mechanism the fields are
| perceived remain open questions.
|
| So maybe there is some value in p-hacking, when taken with
| an appropriate grain of salt? The problem is science
| journalism and its readers often don't know how to do that.
| nate_meurer wrote:
| > _Maybe you should have started with that, rather than
| anecdotal evidence._
|
| Oh dear. You mean I didn't approach this topic with the
| care it deserved?
|
| > _High school students..._
|
| Good for them! I only glanced at it, but it looks
| interesting.
|
| > _Dogs can be trained to find a bar magnet..._
|
| I read this. Right away, I can tell you the authors
| didn't take _nearly_ enough care to eliminate the dogs '
| olfactory sense from the data, and the proof of that is
| that the dogs couldn't locate the jars containing food.
| Dogs should easily have been able perform that task, as
| anyone who operates a sniffer dog will confirm. The fact
| that these dogs couldn't do it means something is wrong,
| and I'd bet money that the problem was that the jars were
| handled in such a way that they _all_ smelled of food.
|
| To be fair, this would be quite hard to get right. Dogs
| have a sense of smell that can seem downright
| supernatural. When I was in high school, Denver PD had a
| bloodhound named Yogi who tracked down the body of a
| murdered child who had been transported ten miles by car.
| Yes, by car [1]. In training exercises, Yogi was able to
| track things that had been sunk thirty feet underwater at
| a local reservoir.
|
| That craziness obviously presents an enormous challenge
| when designing a study on another hypothetical dog sense,
| and while this study went to some length to address it,
| something clearly slipped through the cracks such that
| the study's "food" arm (which was intended to serve as a
| control arm) was rendered useless. It also makes me
| strongly suspect that the magnets were also handled in
| such a way that there was some olfactory indication of
| which jars contained them. The paper doesn't tell us how
| the preparers handled the magnets and their containers,
| and there's no indication that they took measures to
| either prevent the transfer of any odor from the magnets
| to the jars, or somehow ensure that the odor was
| transferred equally to all jars.
|
| My skepticism notwithstanding, I'm fascinated by the
| concept of magnetoreception in animals, especially birds,
| and I think it definitely deserves extensive study.
|
| 1 - Look up the Alie Berrelez murder case.
| ohazi wrote:
| This is also why dogs stare directly into your eyes as they
| poop. They're vulnerable, and you're their lookout.
|
| Might also be why they come into the bathroom or wait by the
| door when you're doing your business.
| abootstrapper wrote:
| I'd ask for a source, but I choose for this to be true.
| flaviocopes wrote:
| That looks like a good explanation for all that monitoring
| borderline stalking going on in that specific room! I never
| thought of it, from now on I'll thank my dog for their
| service!
| cstejerean wrote:
| Sounds easy to test in the Southern Hemisphere. The sun being
| north rather than south is one of the things that threw me off
| when I first went to Australia.
| weinzierl wrote:
| > Makes sense from a practical viewpoint. You're more
| vulnerable [..] and even moreso if the sun is right in your
| eyes.
|
| _" Dogs, like everyone, don't like the sun in their eyes."_
| would be enough of an explanation for me. Predators even don't
| like the sun in their eyes, that's why they attack with sun
| behind them, if they can. Wouldn't make much sense for the dog
| to turn it's back in the most likely direction a predator is
| going to attack.
| djsumdog wrote:
| Dogs are predators. We've domesticated a lot of that out of
| them, sure, but they've got the eyes facing forward and
| carnivore digestive tract. What would be higher to a wild dog
| or wolf in the wild?
| pushswap wrote:
| Actually dogs & wolves have jaws and digestive tracts
| consistent with omnivores which are significantly longer
| than that of carnivores.
| ramblerman wrote:
| If predators attack with the sun behind them then shouldn't
| dogs look into the sun to protect themselves?
| thayne wrote:
| But dogs are descended from wolves, which I think are apex
| predators, and were domesticated by humans, another apex
| predator.
| cgriswald wrote:
| Dogs look to their pack for protection while doing their
| business. If your dog stares at you while he's pooping,
| this is why. It's also why he might follow you into the
| bathroom... to keep _you_ safe while you do your business.
| kempbellt wrote:
| Anything can be explained away depending on which variables
| you take into account.
|
| Some people like heated toilet seats. Maybe most dogs like
| some warm sunhine on their behinds while pooping.
|
| Or maybe they want to face upwind for other reasons.
| danek wrote:
| Lots of pooping happens at night too, though...
| huffmsa wrote:
| Now that you mention it, my childhood dog almost always faced
| mostly north or south when conducting her business
| nebulous1 wrote:
| I'm so glad somebody is finally looking into this
| thisisnico wrote:
| Tax dollars well spent!
| numlock86 wrote:
| Czech tax dollars to be accurate.
| yread wrote:
| The study was supported by the Grant Agency of the Czech
| Republic (project. nr. 506/11/2121)
| _jal wrote:
| "Duckspeak" was the term from Orwell's 1984 for babbling
| slogans as a sort of automatic pattern matching response to
| stimuli.
| HappyDreamer wrote:
| I wonder how the researchers came up with the idea to study this.
|
| Anyway, this is good news? Dogs are more similar to humans, than
| what birds are, right. Maybe there's a magnetic field sensing dog
| gene that can be copied to humans? So that at least the future
| generations won't lose their orientation, as fast as I do, in the
| streets and indoor shopping malls.
| jshevek wrote:
| They were fishing for anything of apparent statistical
| significance.
| blazespin wrote:
| Likely because this is common behavior in animals and humans.
| It makes sense that dogs could be influenced.
| HappyDreamer wrote:
| > this is common behavior
|
| What does "this" here refer to? (Thanks for the reply :- ))
| James_Henry wrote:
| There is a human neural response to magnetic fields:
| https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/03/190318132646.h...
| HappyDreamer wrote:
| > revealed a decrease in alpha-band brain activity -- an
| established response to sensory input -- in some participants
|
| Interesting this happened in only _some_ participants.
|
| Makes me wonder about sensing fields caused by electricity or
| the very weak fields caused by flowing water (which tends to
| contain some salt ions / charged particles).
| fallingfrog wrote:
| Or maybe, dogs just don't like to look straight into the sun when
| they poop, which rises in the east and sets in the west. Good
| grief. Sometimes the smartest people are also the dumbest. Would
| you stare right at the sun when pooping?
| fallingfrog wrote:
| I'm right about this and all you guys are someday if you
| remember it going to regard this as tremendously embarrassing..
| I mean you all just immediately believed the most far fetched
| of hypotheses based on one flawed study in which they didn't
| record which days were sunny.. signing off
| mmastrac wrote:
| They tested for that:
|
| > The fact that larger and faster changes in magnetic
| conditions result in random distribution of body directions,
| i.e., a lowering of the preferences and ceasing of the
| avoidances, can be explained either through disturbing or
| conscious "shutdown" of the magneto-reception mechanism.
| fallingfrog wrote:
| I'll bet if you repeated the whole thing on cloudy days only
| the effect would go away. You'd have to have very very strong
| evidence that dogs have some sensory organ that detects
| magnetic fields when the sun is right there in the sky and
| explains the effect in a way that is obvious to everyone.
| eganist wrote:
| > I'll bet if you repeated the whole thing on cloudy days
| only the effect would go away. You'd have to have very very
| strong evidence that dogs have some sensory organ that
| detects magnetic fields when the sun is right there in the
| sky and explains the effect in a way that is obvious to
| everyone.
|
| again, pages 5-6:
|
| > Even if we would assume that these sunshine hours were
| evenly distributed over the daylight period and the year
| (as our observations were),there would only be a
| probability of 33% that the observation was made when the
| sun was visible. Hence,with high probability (67%) most
| walks during the day-light period were made when it was
| cloudy.
|
| There's wisdom in reading the study before commenting
| further considering your specific rebuttals have all been
| addressed in the source material. There were _literally_
| nearly 7,500 measurement events factored into this study,
| the majority of which were likely cloudy given the
| location.
| fallingfrog wrote:
| _Likely?_ so let me get this straight, they didn't even
| _record_ which days were sunny? Extraordinary claims and
| all that. Sorry but I'm right about this no matter how
| many downvotes I get.
| jshevek wrote:
| Voting is often influenced by tone and adherence to site
| guidelines, not just accuracy.
| [deleted]
| eganist wrote:
| > _Likely?_ so let me get this straight, they didn't even
| record which days were sunny? Extraordinary claims and
| all that. Sorry but I'm right about this no matter how
| many downvotes I get.
|
| Please just read the paper. Events were timestamped,
| aggregated over two years, and took place at all times of
| day (including well after dark) with the same outcome.
|
| Disengaging. Cheers, friend.
| laretluval wrote:
| They only find the effect for cases where there is low flux in
| the magnetic field.
|
| This indicates another reason to be skeptical of the study. If
| an effect is found in one condition and not another this is a
| red flag for p-hacking.
| lonelappde wrote:
| High flux means the direction of the field is undefined.
| tlb wrote:
| "High" flux for geomagnetic fields means it changed by a
| few degrees. So it's not anywhere near undefined, just
| slightly off.
| eganist wrote:
| > Or maybe, dogs just don't like to look straight into the sun
| when they poop, which rises in the east and sets in the west.
| Good grief. Sometimes the smartest people are also the dumbest.
| Would you stare right at the sun when pooping?
|
| Pages 6-7 (pdf pages 5-6, or just grep 'sun') of the source
| study (https://frontiersinzoology.biomedcentral.com/track/pdf/1
| 0.11...):
|
| > This calls for necessity to test whether the dog alignment is
| not actually influenced primarily by time of the day and most
| probably by position of the sun on the sky. We can, however,
| exclude this alternative. First, days when the magnetic field
| parameters change erratically and unpredictably (i.e., magnetic
| storms) are quite frequent. These changes have been well
| studied by others and are described in the literature (cf.
| [21,22] for re-views). Second, the data collection was not
| biased to either morning or afternoon (Table 8). Third, periods
| of sampling under conditions of quiet magnetic field were
| rather evenly distributed in the course of the day.Fourth, and
| most importantly, alignment during excreting was apparent under
| conditions of quiet magnet field,irrespective of the time of
| day or month. Time of day per se was not a reliable predictor
| of expression of alignment (Figure 2, Tables 3, 9). Fifth,
| generally, there are on average 1,450 sunshine hours per year
| at maximum in the Czech Republic and in Germany, on localities
| where measurements were done. Even if we would assume that
| these sunshine hours were evenly distributed over the daylight
| period and the year (as our observations were),there would only
| be a probability of 33% that the observation was made when the
| sun was visible. Hence,with high probability (67%) most walks
| during the day-light period were made when it was cloudy.
|
| > Last but not least, the argument that the dogs might orient
| with regard to sun position so that they turn with their back
| to the sun in order to avoid dazzling by sunshine during such a
| sensitive and vulnerable act as excretion can be questioned.
| This argument is not plausible for urine marking, which is a
| brief act. We doubt that a dog that cares of not being attacked
| would always make sure to be turned away from the sun. The dog
| will likely look in that direction from where danger can most
| probably be expected - and this is for sure not always the
| direction away from the sun. In contrast to a human, the dog is
| relying also on its nose and its ears (in some breeds even more
| than on its eyes) when monitoring its surroundings - so we may
| expect that the dog heads with its nose and pinnae against the
| wind or in the direction of interest. Directing the pinnae and
| the nose may take priority over eyes. One can also often
| observe that dogs (especially during defecation) align in a
| certain direction, which is actually a different one from the
| direction of interest and they turn their head then in that
| other direction. Also we have to take into account that dogs
| are smaller than humans, they look at a different angle over
| the horizon and even in situations when we are dazzled, they
| might be not. Quite important: note also that the preference is
| axial - there are many cases when the dog actually looks
| southwards. There is no evidence for shift of the alignment
| axis during the day.
|
| ---
|
| Shoot, they even have pitch-dark measurements on page 8 (pg 7
| pdf)
| amriksohata wrote:
| This reminded me of this article in the BBC of
|
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/stories-51281856/electrosensit...
|
| and related studies behind it
|
| http://www.utdallas.edu/news/2016/2/3-31891_Study-Uncovers-H...
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/mar/18/humans-earth...
|
| Basicaly in nearly all Hindu texts, when praying or doing Yoga
| they tell people to face East/the sun, so that your magnetic
| field is aligned as unaligning it risks disease.
|
| The team say modern environments would likely interfere with this
| "sense", while there is no sign as yet that such a system is
| linked to human consciousness, or that it influences our
| behaviour - although the team say it remains a possibility, and
| are planning experiments to find out.
|
| I wonder if dogs almost feel a need to align with field in the
| right way to feel comfortable.
| erickhill wrote:
| Is this why some folks think dogs seem to be able to predict
| earthquakes? They have some built-in connection?
| ncmncm wrote:
| Earthquake build-up produces electric fields.
|
| It would be a different sensory system.
| sebow wrote:
| EM fields are sensed at different levels by different animals,
| plants, etc. Arguably the fact that the human brain is so complex
| and interconnected means that we sense very hardly these fields
| (like a black box).
|
| No study needed really,this has been known for decades.
| badtooling wrote:
| Fwiw- India's vastu too has rules regarding pooping direction
| jammygit wrote:
| ...I used to joke with my wife this must be the case.
|
| My dog spends so much time trying to find the right place. It's
| during the day, so it can't be astrology, so must be leylines or
| the magnetic field of the earth. Elementary really
|
| She will get a kick out of this article for sure
| jb775 wrote:
| I just grabbed my compass to check...can confirm that my black
| lab Piper's recent poops have been north/south. Now that I think
| of it, I can't remember a time she hasn't been facing
| north/south...no matter the weather or time of day.
| williesleg wrote:
| The shit PBS does for clicks.
| aj7 wrote:
| My wife, who can barely read a map, has such good directional
| sense that I am convinced that attoampere(?) currents induced in
| her brain as she cuts through the earth's magnetic field are
| interpretable by her and form memories.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| It is interesting. Now that it was pointed out, the pattern does
| seem to match our dog as well. I would love to find out more.
|
| Mamy who saw dog select a spot are aware of the 'thrice blessed'
| dance.
| tribeofone wrote:
| LOVE weekend posts on HN!
| yovagoyu wrote:
| Tax dollars.
| contravariant wrote:
| I encourage everyone to read the paper linked in the article.
| They've gone through surprising amounts of effort to justify
| their conclusion, and it includes some surprisingly nice graphs
| of the 'alignment during defecation' of dogs.
|
| I sincerely hope their works will be recognised by the (Ig)-nobel
| committee.
| [deleted]
| ebg13 wrote:
| The article was published at the end of 2013. They did get
| recognized.
| contravariant wrote:
| Oh right, I hadn't seen the date. Glad they got recognised
| though.
| supernova87a wrote:
| I did not understand the 3 bins of 0%, 1%, 2% etc. declination.
| Does anyone have a simple explanation for that?
|
| Also, the point about the sun is good -- maybe they just don't
| want sun in their eyes. Clearly the very dedicated and obsessed
| researcher needs to do a similar study but indoors. Can you
| imagine who has the personal passion to do this data
| collection?
| contravariant wrote:
| I don't have a particularly good explanation for those
| specific choices, but I did notice that they resulted in
| somewhat similar sample sizes across all three bins, so it
| might just have been that.
| supernova87a wrote:
| Oh, I meant, I don't even understand what the bins are --
| what is the declination measuring that they wanted to
| divide the data up by?
| nebulous1 wrote:
| They indeed won the 2014 Ignoble Biology prize!
|
| https://www.improbable.com/ig-about/winners/#ig2014
| yovagoyu wrote:
| The sun set/rises East/West. Maybe dogs just don't like looking
| directly into the sun when they go.
| eganist wrote:
| Pages 6-8 (5-7 pdf) discuss the sun as well as measurements
| across times of day.
|
| https://frontiersinzoology.biomedcentral.com/track/pdf/10.11...
| dmode wrote:
| What about pooping at night though?
| chewbacha wrote:
| That was my first thought too.
| tuesday20 wrote:
| Would be nice to know if there is any other reason, other than
| "don't like sun in my eyes".
|
| I remember during the tsunamis, animals knew something is gonna
| happen and got restless. I wonder how much of these intuition and
| senses humans have lost, by tuning out nature
| simonw wrote:
| The thing I love about this story is that it is SUCH a dog thing
| to do. Dogs would absolutely poop in alignment with earth's
| magnetic field. They wouldn't need a reason to do it. It's just
| the kind of thing they'd do.
| heimatau wrote:
| I come to HN for the comments. You don't disappoint. I'm glad we
| have multiple people whom thinking critically enough about a
| publication to demystify it.
|
| Nate says it's simply primal. Eldritch talked about the cognitive
| bias. Etc, etc. thanks for the critical thinking!! keep up the
| great work!
| blululu wrote:
| This is fun, however it seems like it would be easier and more
| reliable to just put some dogs next to a gigantic magnet. There
| are a number of confounds related to sunlight and other
| geophysical parameters (wind) that are not controlled for in this
| study. A magnet would demonstrate a clear causal link much faster
| than forcing some grad students to watch dogs pooping in
| uncontrolled settings. Though I suppose people who own 4T magnets
| are probably not cool with some random person showing up with a
| dozen dogs and a couple of compost bags.
| blazespin wrote:
| That's the next paper I'm sure. This one was likely a study of
| the results and an accidental reveal of the correlation. It's
| possible the correlation was accidental though, a minor bit of
| p-hacking.
|
| It'd be awesome to prove this false (if false) as it'd be a
| very compelling learning study for problem of p-hacking.
| amiga_500 wrote:
| Should humans be doing the same? Is the failure to align toilets
| contributing to increased stress? We need more research!
| jaldhar wrote:
| Pitch to Gwyneth Paltrow: Pooping magnets.
| ncmncm wrote:
| Dogs get feng shui.
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