Birds do it, bees do it...

[neufer]

Dogs align with magnetic fields while pooping, study says
By Amina Khan, Los Angeles Times / January 3, 2014

<<Dogs can typically smell and hear far better than their human companions. Now it appears they can sense Earth’s magnetic field too, say a team of biologists – and they show it when they poop. These canine compasses prefer to align themselves along a north-south magnetic axis when they relieve themselves, according to a study in the journal Frontiers in Zoology. The findings may help scientists better understand how that strange sense called magnetoreception manifests in mammals.

Dogs wouldn't be the only animals thought to use magnetoreception: Birds do it, bees do it – and certain types of mammals do it, according to study coauthor Sabine Begall, a biologist at the University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany. “We discovered [by measuring Google Earth aerial pictures] that cattle align with the magnetic field lines a few years ago,” Begall said in an email. “Since then, we studied hunting behavior in [the] red fox and found that they have a preference for N-E during their mousing jumps, and from there it was just a small step to study dogs. First, we looked also at other behaviors but the results were less promising than the ‘pooping direction.’”

The scientists studied 70 dogs of 37 different breeds as they defecated (1,893 dumps, to be precise) and urinated (a whopping 5,582 times) – data collected over two years. The researchers found that dogs prefer to point along the north-south axis when they do their business – as long as the magnetic field is stable. When the magnetic field shifts – say, because of an oncoming solar storm – it becomes more difficult to see the pattern, Begall said. “We were quite frustrated, because we couldn't find a clear preference for a certain direction,” Begall said. “Then, we sorted the data according to the prevailing [magnetic-field] conditions at the time of recording, and this analysis revealed a highly significant and predictable effect.”

Both male and female dogs took this north-south stance when defecating, the study authors said. But male dogs took slightly different positions when urinating – probably a result of their leg-lifting behavior. How that leg-lifting – right or left? – affects a dog’s alignment is “currently under study,” the authors wrote. The authors caution that more research is needed — in part because ‘normal’ magnetic conditions occurred only in 30% of the cases studied for this work.

If they do indeed sense magnetic fields, why do dogs feel the need to point north-south when they do their business? The authors don’t know yet, Begall said. “It could be that the dogs somehow calibrate their compass or read their ‘mental map’ during the walks,” Begall said. “Imagine that you read a compass during a hike. If the compass needle is shaky, you might dismiss reading the compass at all. That could be the reason why the dogs have no preference when the [magnetic field] is unstable.”>>

[Chris Peterson]

Dogs align with magnetic fields while pooping, study says
By Amina Khan, Los Angeles Times / January 3, 2014

I think we have some strong candidates for this year's Ig Nobel prize.

[Beyond]

Speaking of bees... Here's 15 BIG pictures of bees. One is covered in pollen. Pollen, you know... plant sex. How plants propagate. Bees are an integral part of plant propagation. They do it all the time. Whether or not they do it while orientated to magnetic fields or not, i don't know. I'm not a bee-ologist.
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/ ... hotography

[geckzilla]

Why go to a crappy news article when you can go straight to the source? Sam sometimes includes some interesting descriptions with his bees, too. A lot of them you may be surprised to find they look like bumblebees but are actually bees which are filling a bumblebee niche. I've been following the USGS BIML stream for a few weeks now since it was highlighted at Flickr.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/usgsbiml

[Beyond]

Now you post it Why didn't you post it earlier, so i wouldn't have had to gone to all that trouble Well, at least the lousy article i posted has the pollen laden bee in it. I didn't see it in Sam's rather long page, although, the article i posted doesn't have the big green caterpillar or an acorn. All in all, the whole thing bugs me.

[geckzilla]

Well, I didn't think many here were very interested in entomology. I did post it to my Facebook page...

The pollen bee is one of the older photos in the photo stream. If you search for pollen in just the photo stream you can find the pollen-laden bee as well as some specimens with only a little pollen.
http://www.flickr.com/search/?w=54563451@N08&q=pollen

[Beyond]

For me, entomology is critters, and critters are always interesting, at least to a point. As for Facebook... i have no interest what-so-ever and never go there!