ASK THE EXPERTS WITH CODY
1. Circling over and over… and over and over… before lying down.
Your dog’s habit of walking in circles before settling in for a nap comes from its distant history of sleeping in the untamed outdoors. Thousands of years ago, dogs would circle before sleeping in order to flatten any brush or leaves and make comfy nests for themselves. Leslie Irvine, author of If You Tame Me: Understanding Our Connection With Animals, told Live Science that the behavior could also be a safety measure, saying, “In the wild, the circling would flatten grasses or snow and would drive out any snakes or large insects.” She adds that circling could also be a dog’s way of marking his or her territory.
2. Circling before pooping.
Again with the circling — do dogs just like the feeling of wind in their faces as they spin around and around? There are a few theories as to why dogs often circle before pooping. As this video from Discovery News suggests, it could be that they are trying to tamp down brush — just like when they sleep — but in this case, it’s so that they don’t get feces on themselves. Flattening the ground could also allow the scents from their bodily fluids to have a farther reach, letting other animals know whose territory it is.
A recent study sheds light on this behavior, and reveals something about your dog you may not have noticed before: Dogs poop along the Earth’s north/south axis. That’s right, your dog’s a walking compass! (Well, sort of.) A two-year study published by German and Czech scholars in 2014 found that dogs prefer to defecate while positioned in alignment with the magnetic north/south axis of the planet — and so all that circling beforehand may simply be them looking for exactly the right spot. Just why dogs want to align their bathroom time with the north and south is still a mystery. In the study, researchers wrote, “It is still enigmatic why the dogs do align at all, whether they do it 'consciously' (i.e., whether the magnetic field is sensorial[ly] perceived) … or whether its reception is controlled on the vegetative level (they 'feel better/more comfortable or worse/less comfortable' in a certain direction).”