Dogs may use Earth's magnetic field to take shortcuts
Dogs are renowned for their world-class noses, but a new study suggests they may have an additionalalbeit hiddensensory talent: a magnetic compass. The sense appears to allow them to use Earths magnetic field to calculate shortcuts in unfamiliar terrain.
The finding is a first in dogs, says Catherine Lohmann, a biologist at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, who studies magnetoreception and navigation in turtles. She notes that dogs navigational abilities have been studied much less compared with migratory animals such as birds. Its an insight into how [dogs] build up their picture of space, adds Richard Holland, a biologist at Bangor University who studies bird navigation.
There were already hints that dogslike many animals, and maybe even humanscan perceive Earths magnetic field. In 2013, Hynek Burda, a sensory ecologist at the Czech University of Life Sciences Prague who has worked on magnetic reception for 3 decades, and colleagues showed dogs tend to orient themselves north-south while urinating or defecating. Because this behavior is involved in marking and recognizing territory, Burda reasoned the alignment helps dogs figure out the location relative to other spots. But stationary alignment isnt the same thing as navigation.
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/07/dogs-may-use-earth-s-magnetic-field-take-shortcuts