Anyone else’s dog do this?

No, I’m not referring to the canine constitutional itself.

Rather, the relentless spinning is what I mean. My dog does this without fail, every time we take to the trail. It’s time consuming enough to get this bitch to finally find a favorable locale for fecal relinquishment. But even after my dog detects the best dumping ground, she’s still not done making me wait. Phase two for dropping a deuce involves becoming a ballerina as the leash transforms into half a DNA strand before my very eyes.

WAIT – is this where they got the term “top dog” from? Like, as in, “spinning top”?

(That’d be cool, but no. That comes from early dog-pets who’d leap to the top of a moving meal on the command of a Cro-magnon Master, rip into its jugular, and turn it into dinner).

It wasn’t until more recently that I saw something sciencey about the shiz-spin that made me say, “Aaaaah. I seeeee!”

Indeed, “seeing” actually is closely linked to our pups’ poop pirouette.

How so?

Back when your beagle was still a wolf, he and his posse would use their magneto-detection to do a lot of stuff – just like other animals did and still do. Flattening the ground before settling in for a snooze was partially for comfort and partially to claim territory. Likewise, flattening the ground pre-elimination helped prevent peripheral plant life from paint-brushing them like a furry canvas with their own stool.

As for the magnetism-vision connection, the direction dogs end up in has been the basis for research. One study took 70 dogs of 37 different breeds and watched them drop bowel bombs for like two years. When the earth’s magnetic field was “calm” (no cosmo-psychosis or solar flares or stuff like that), they’d almost always finish their sphincter spin facing North-South – as if their viscera were drawn by some invisible vestigial vacuum. Much like birds that go in the same arrow or cows that migrate North-South, dogs have a magnetic sense.

But so do we!

I mean, we may not anymore, but we did at some point have the ability to detect the earth’s magnetic field. Not too long ago, scientists found out our eyes have these proteins called cytochromes that helped us see the earth’s magnetic field before we presumably evolved not to need it anymore. I guess the idea is that when we traveled around in the elements sans parkas and Uggz (did I spell that right?) a cognitive compass in chilly inimical climates proved imperative. Now that we’re able to just heat up the planet by slowly destroying it, we’ ain’t need to produce functional peeper proteins anymore!

But maybe we can still “tell” without realizing it. Take a compass to your favorite porcelain throne (you know you have one) next time you get the colonic call.

(And then, obviously, report your results back here in the comment section.)