Dogs Poop in Line with Earth's Magnetic Field

This is so cool.  When your dog is getting ready to, uh, go, and he/she keeps sniffing, moving around, stopping, changing position, pausing again, changing position again:  Your dog is aligning him/herself with the Earth's magnetic field before doing his business.  Who'da thunk?

According to the research (conducted by Czech and German scientists):

“It is still enigmatic why the dogs do align at all, whether they do it ‘consciously’ (i.e., whether the magnetic field is sensorial perceived [the dogs ‘see,’ ‘hear’ or ‘smell’ the compass direction or perceive it as a haptic stimulus] or whether its reception is controlled on the vegetative level [they ‘feel better/more comfortable or worse/less comfortable’ in a certain direction]).  Our analysis of the raw data (not shown here) indicates that dogs not only prefer N-S direction, but at the same time they also avoid E-W direction.”

Also, dogs don't do this north-south alignment when they're being walked on a leash; only when they're on their own.

There's so much we're just finding out; that animals have a lot more going on than we ever dreamed.  Dolphins bite on the venomous puffer fish to get high — presumably knowing exactly how much they can safely ingest — and then pass the puffer fish around to their buddies, like a joint.

Salmon and migratory birds are using the Earth's magnetic field for their respective migration routes.  And even ants are sensitive to this magnetic field and can distinguish between north, south, east and west.

The article doesn't mention anything about cats...