Posted on 09/13/2021 12:18:14 PM PDT by Red Badger
This photo shows a calf in a latrine undergoing MooLoo training. Credit: FBN
On a farm where cows freely relieve themselves as they graze, the accumulation and spread of waste often contaminates local soil and waterways. This can be controlled by confining the cows in barns, but in these close quarters their urine and feces combine to create ammonia, an indirect greenhouse gas. In an article published today (September 13, 2021) in the journal Current Biology, researchers show that cows can be potty-trained, enabling waste to be collected and treated, thereby cleaning up the barn, reducing air pollution, and creating more open, animal-friendly farms.
“It’s usually assumed that cattle are not capable of controlling defecation or urination,” says co-author Jan Langbein, an animal psychologist at the Research Institute for Farm Animal Biology (FBN) in Germany, but he and his team questioned this thinking. “Cattle, like many other animals or farm animals are quite clever and they can learn a lot. Why shouldn’t they be able to learn how to use a toilet?”
VIDEO AT LINK................
This video shows a calf in a latrine undergoing MooLoo training. Credit: FBN
To potty-train the calves, a process they dubbed MooLoo training, the research team with scientists from FBN, FLI (Germany) and the University of Auckland (New Zealand) worked backward. They started off by rewarding the calves when they urinated in the latrine, and then they allowed the calves to approach the latrines from outside when they needed to urinate.
The ammonia produced in cow waste doesn’t directly contribute to climate change, but when it is leached into the soil, microbes convert it into nitrous oxide, the third-most important greenhouse gas after methane and carbon dioxide. Agriculture is the largest source of ammonia emissions, with livestock farming making up over half of that contribution.
“You have to try to include the animals in the process and train the animals to follow what they should learn,” says Langbein. “We guessed it should be possible to train the animals, but to what extent we didn’t know.”
Observers watch calves undergo MooLoo toilet training. Credit: FBN
To encourage latrine use, the researchers wanted the calves to associate urination outside the latrine with an unpleasant experience. “As a punishment we first used in-ear headphones and we played a very nasty sound whenever they urinated outside,” says Langbein. “We thought this would punish the animals—not too aversively—but they didn’t care. Ultimately, a splash of water worked well as a gentle deterrent.”
Over the course of a few weeks, the research team successfully trained 11 out of the 16 calves in the experiment. Remarkably, the calves showed a level of performance comparable to that of children and superior to that of very young children.
Langbein is optimistic that with more training that this success rate can be further improved. “After ten, fifteen, twenty years of researching with cattle, we know that animals have a personality, and they handle different things in a different way. They are not all the same.”
Now that the researchers know how to potty-train cows, they want to transfer their results into real cattle housing and to outdoor systems. Langbein hopes that “in a few years all cows will go to a toilet,” he says.
Reference: “Learned control of urinary reflexes in cattle to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions” by Dirksen et al., 13 September 2021, Current Biology. DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2021.07.011
This work was supported by the Volkswagen Foundation.
I hope they are accomodating transgender bovines.
Is this Babylon Bee?
They will have to change Borden’s Motto.
from:
“From Contented Cows”
to:
“From Continent Cows.”
But do they leave the lid up?
before long they’ll be claiming that even bulls give milk.
Cows been freely relieving themselves as they graze for how long now?! All of a sudden, its a problem? LMAO
These people are utter frakin’ idiots. Period.
Not the Babylon Bee, but scitech.com?
Think I’ll go cow tipping tonight.
5.56mm
Maybe they’ll be able to potty train the homeless...Nah.
Still, a good spray with a hose might work.
Even if successful, in a few years Democrats will be blaming cow toilets for global warming.
Especially sheep. Like Harold. He's that most dangerous of creatures, a clever sheep. 'e's realized that a sheep's life consists of standin' around for a few months and then bein' eaten. And that's a depressing prospect for an ambitious sheep.
Manure contaminate soil? BS quite literally. Maybe at a feedlot but not in the field. Might get a little that goes into a creek during a downpour if the land isn't graded to prevent it.
I can’t wait until real cows start doing the Charmin’ commercials.
“From personal experience I can guarantee to you that this is the softest brand!”
I think the scientists have been tipping cow pies because they're tripping hard.
So I guess it is possible.
Makes it easier to keep her stall clean.
They might slip on the porcelain.
On the udder side, Gary Larson will never run out of inspiration.
Obviously these assclowns never dealt with them cloth diaper pails. Talk about ammonia build up. 😨😂🙌
I don’t think that’s such a bad idea, although the cost might be prohibitively high for the average cattle rancher. “Urea” is a substance widely found in industry - I know it as plant fertilizer. Also cow poop - very useful as fuel, fertilizer, etc. Why not make it easier to clean up? And the calves are clean after getting splashed with water. Win/win! But, ah, probably I would just do as cattle ranchers before me have done and just rotate the herd through different fields, leaving the cow pies to mature so they can be picked up by the local fertilizer guy. (I spent an afternoon watching GIANT trucks bring cow manure to a processing place - they were making fertilizer - when I was out for a drive once here in Colorado. That was a whole lot of cow manure!:) Those trucks were busy!)
Ah, the Mexican mushroom. A/k/a Magic mushroom.
Psilocybin
5.56mm
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