Dogs can be trained to find a bar magnet
Magnetoreception, the ability to sense the Earth’s magnetic field (MF), is a widespread phenomenon in the animal kingdom. In 1966, the first report on a magnetosensitive vertebrate, the European robin (Erithacus rubecula), was published. After that, numerous further species of different taxa have be...
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ftpubmed:oai:pubmedcentral.nih.gov:6301327 2023-05-15T15:51:01+02:00 Dogs can be trained to find a bar magnet Martini, Sabine Begall, Sabine Findeklee, Tanja Schmitt, Marcus Malkemper, E. Pascal Burda, Hynek 2018-12-17 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6301327/ https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.6117 en eng PeerJ Inc. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6301327/ http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.6117 © 2018 Martini et al. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited. CC-BY Animal Behavior Text 2018 ftpubmed https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.6117 2018-12-30T01:16:37Z Magnetoreception, the ability to sense the Earth’s magnetic field (MF), is a widespread phenomenon in the animal kingdom. In 1966, the first report on a magnetosensitive vertebrate, the European robin (Erithacus rubecula), was published. After that, numerous further species of different taxa have been identified to be magnetosensitive as well. Recently, it has been demonstrated that domestic dogs (Canis lupus familiaris) prefer to align their body axis along the North–South axis during territorial marking under calm MF conditions and that they abandon this preference when the Earth’s MF is unstable. In a further study conducting a directional two-choice-test, dogs showed a spontaneous preference for the northern direction. Being designated as putatively magnetosensitive and being also known as trainable for diverse choice and search tests, dogs seem to be suitable model animals for a direct test of magnetoreception: learning to find a magnet. Using operant conditioning dogs were trained to identify the MF of a bar magnet in a three-alternative forced-choice experiment. We excluded visual cues and used control trials with food treats to test for the role of olfaction in finding the magnet. While 13 out of 16 dogs detected the magnet significantly above chance level (53–73% success rate), none of the dogs managed to do so in finding the food treat (23–40% success rate). In a replication of the experiment under strictly blinded conditions five out of six dogs detected the magnet above chance level (53–63% success rate). These experiments support the existence of a magnetic sense in domestic dogs. Whether the sense enables dogs to perceive MFs as weak as the Earth’s MF, if they use it for orientation, and by which mechanism the fields are perceived remain open questions. Text Canis lupus PubMed Central (PMC) PeerJ 6 e6117 |
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Animal Behavior |
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Animal Behavior Martini, Sabine Begall, Sabine Findeklee, Tanja Schmitt, Marcus Malkemper, E. Pascal Burda, Hynek Dogs can be trained to find a bar magnet |
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Animal Behavior |
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Magnetoreception, the ability to sense the Earth’s magnetic field (MF), is a widespread phenomenon in the animal kingdom. In 1966, the first report on a magnetosensitive vertebrate, the European robin (Erithacus rubecula), was published. After that, numerous further species of different taxa have been identified to be magnetosensitive as well. Recently, it has been demonstrated that domestic dogs (Canis lupus familiaris) prefer to align their body axis along the North–South axis during territorial marking under calm MF conditions and that they abandon this preference when the Earth’s MF is unstable. In a further study conducting a directional two-choice-test, dogs showed a spontaneous preference for the northern direction. Being designated as putatively magnetosensitive and being also known as trainable for diverse choice and search tests, dogs seem to be suitable model animals for a direct test of magnetoreception: learning to find a magnet. Using operant conditioning dogs were trained to identify the MF of a bar magnet in a three-alternative forced-choice experiment. We excluded visual cues and used control trials with food treats to test for the role of olfaction in finding the magnet. While 13 out of 16 dogs detected the magnet significantly above chance level (53–73% success rate), none of the dogs managed to do so in finding the food treat (23–40% success rate). In a replication of the experiment under strictly blinded conditions five out of six dogs detected the magnet above chance level (53–63% success rate). These experiments support the existence of a magnetic sense in domestic dogs. Whether the sense enables dogs to perceive MFs as weak as the Earth’s MF, if they use it for orientation, and by which mechanism the fields are perceived remain open questions. |
format |
Text |
author |
Martini, Sabine Begall, Sabine Findeklee, Tanja Schmitt, Marcus Malkemper, E. Pascal Burda, Hynek |
author_facet |
Martini, Sabine Begall, Sabine Findeklee, Tanja Schmitt, Marcus Malkemper, E. Pascal Burda, Hynek |
author_sort |
Martini, Sabine |
title |
Dogs can be trained to find a bar magnet |
title_short |
Dogs can be trained to find a bar magnet |
title_full |
Dogs can be trained to find a bar magnet |
title_fullStr |
Dogs can be trained to find a bar magnet |
title_full_unstemmed |
Dogs can be trained to find a bar magnet |
title_sort |
dogs can be trained to find a bar magnet |
publisher |
PeerJ Inc. |
publishDate |
2018 |
url |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6301327/ https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.6117 |
genre |
Canis lupus |
genre_facet |
Canis lupus |
op_relation |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6301327/ http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.6117 |
op_rights |
© 2018 Martini et al. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited. |
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CC-BY |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.6117 |
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PeerJ |
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6 |
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e6117 |
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