The article itself is over a decade old and based on questionable data gathering and a faulty analysis processes. If you read the article they published they essentially didn’t find anything, determined without providing evidence that other factors couldn’t be a determining factor, and then data-dredging when they could find anything statistically significant to match their hypothesis.
SkeptVet article explaining the findings in detail.
Basically it was just shitty science.
Studies like this have me confused.
How do we know they use the magnetic field, and don’t just like… Look at the sun, or the shadows it casts.
The text in the picture literally explains it’s in a free roaming environment not influenced by walls or doors.
“what do you do for work?”
“I watch dogs poop”
So when you’re lost, just find a pooping dog to know where the North is. Or the south.
Wait this is useless.
I blame the sun. Dogs poop in the morning and evening when owners are not at work. The sun shines from the east and from the west during these hours. And I think they don’t like facing the sun.
Time of day is addressed in the study and
was not a reliable predictor of expression of alignment
They also mention that the presence of the sun is possibly likely to affect dogs less than humans - meaning that dogs might have less aversion to facing the sun.
Study is here: https://frontiersinzoology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1742-9994-10-80
