Cardinal direction in the resting behaviour of free-ranging dogs

Basumatary, Ashim Kumar (2022) Cardinal direction in the resting behaviour of free-ranging dogs. Masters thesis, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Kolkata.

Text (MS dissertation of Ashim Kumar Basumatary (17MS201)) 17MS201_Thesis_file.pdf - Submitted Version Restricted to Repository staff only Download (1MB)

Abstract

In animals, direction plays a great role as they have to forage from one place to another in search of food, homing and seasonal navigation. Navigation is important for both long-distance and short-distance navigators and for travelling those distances they use celestial or magnetic cues as a reference point. There are also evidences that some migratory animals have magnetic receptors in their eye through which they can travel from one place to another without the need for any visual cues. In some animals, it is found that they prefer a particular direction while resting and grazing for this day use magnetic direction as their reference point. So, in our study, we tried to see whether free-ranging dogs have any directional preference or not while resting and whether other factors such as age, gender, medium on where they rest and different locations have any effect on their directional preferability. From our results, we found that at a population level free-ranging dogs did not show any directional preferability but on repeated observations of the individuals of a particular location we found that they prefer some directionality. We saw that north is the most preferred direction among them and south is the least preferred direction and the most preferred resting behaviour is lazing and watching objects but at population level sleeping is the most preferred resting behaviour.

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