(CN) — If a bear can be taught to ride a unicycle, and a lion can learn to jump through hoops, then certainly a bovine can be toilet trained, right?
That intriguing premise led scientists in Germany and New Zealand to explore the possibility in a new study published Monday in the journal Current Biology. Not without a sense of humor, they dubbed the effort “MooLoo Training.”
Researchers spent what must have been a grueling two weeks training 16 calves to use a specially designed toilet. Eleven successfully picked up the new skill. The researchers believe that, given more time, the success rate would climb even higher as some animals, much like humans, simply require more time to process a new task.
“It’s usually assumed that cattle are not capable of controlling defecation or urination,” said co-author Dr. Jan Langbein, an animal psychologist at the Research Institute for Farm Animal Biology in Germany. “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?”
The impetus for their work stems from a European Union directive requiring member states to significantly reduce ammonia emissions, of which cattle are a major source. For example, Germany, where the study took place, has been tasked with cutting its ammonia emissions by 29% before 2030.
Despite not being a greenhouse gas itself, once ammonia from cattle urine leaches into the soil or mixes with feces it gets converted by microbes into nitrous oxide. Nitrous oxide is the third-most potent greenhouse gas, following methane and carbon dioxide, and livestock farming is responsible for over half of worldwide ammonia emissions. That means a system like the one proposed by the authors could significantly reduce livestock emissions if widely adopted throughout the industry.
As with most animal training regimes, Langbein and his team employed the ol’ carrot-and-stick approach. They rewarded calves with treats for urinating in a designated area, and sprayed them with water when they missed the mark. The original “stick” was a pair of headphones that played an abrasive sound when calves urinated outside the latrine but researchers soon learned the animals were unfazed by noise.
“As a punishment we first used in-ear headphones and we played a very nasty sound whenever they urinated outside,” Langbein said. “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.”
Due to EU restrictions on research involving animals, the team had a limited amount of time to conduct the training. In the 15 days they had to work with, they successfully trained nearly 70% of the calves, though Langbein believes given more time that number would almost certainly rise.
“For animal welfare reasons, we only had a certain number of days (15) available for training (as we injected a diuretic before each training session of 45 [minutes] for effective training),” Langbein explained in an email. “So, 11 calves only needed 15 sessions of 45 min each or less to learn. However, this short training was certainly not enough for the other five calves. With longer training, I'm sure more animals would have learned to use the toilet.”
The training regime consisted of two phases: in-latrine training, where the calves were confined to the specific area containing the latrine, followed by toileting training, which required the calves to hold it until they made their way through a passageway connecting their pens to the latrine.
Remarkably, perhaps even frustratingly, the researchers’ success rate with calves was comparable to that of parents potty-training their children, and even surpassed the performance of very young children, according to the study.
And for the enterprising dairyman out there, a commercial cow-toilet (though not the model used in the study) is already on the market from Dutch company Hanskamp. Selling for a little under $25,000, a single unit can service 25 cows and allows urine and feces to be collected separately for resale. Novel uses for the waste material includes fertilizer and hydrogen production, but more applications are thought to be on the horizon and could make for an interesting business opportunity.
“Our findings are original and reveal a hitherto unrealized opportunity to harness the cognitive capacities of animals to help resolve pressing environmental issues without compromising animal welfare,” Langbein concluded.
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