Dogs use Earth's Magnetic field to Navigate

Dog, an animal that is considered to be most lovable and loyal is renowned for its sense of smell. Now, a new study has shown that in addition to the sensory talent, dogs also possess a sense that allows them to use the earth’s magnetic field to calculate shortcuts.
Catherine Lohmann, a biologist at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill says that the navigational abilities of a dog have been studied much less compared to that of the migratory animals.

There were already hints that dogs, like many other animals, can perceive the earth’s magnetic field.
In 2013, Hynek Burda, a sensory ecologist at the Czech University of Life Sciences, Prague showed that dogs tend to orient themselves in the north-south direction while urinating or defecating. Burda reasoned that the alignment help dogs figure out the location relative to other spots. But this was not enough to substantiate the point that it helps them to navigate.

In the new study conducted recently, video cameras and GPS trackers were initially put on 4 dogs and were taken to the forest. The GPS tracks showed two types of behavior to the owner. One was dubbed tracking which means that the dog would retrace the original route, probably following the same scent. The other was scouting, which surprised many of the researchers as the dog took a completely new route without any backtracking.

In the middle of scouting, the dog would stop and run for about 20 meters along the north-south axis. Those short runs looked like an alignment along the magnetic field. This research continued for years and the researchers had collected about 223 cases out of which 170 cases showed that the dogs stopped, turned back and ran for 20 meters along a north-south axis. Another scientist, Adam Miklosi, who specializes in dog behaviour at Eotvos Lorand University says “designing magnetoreception experiments are complicated because it is hard to make an animal rely on that sense”. Miklosi also adds that “it seems to be an ancient ability and it is good to see this in a dog”.

Reference: Sciencemag