We managed to toilet train cows, and they learned faster than a toddler:
Cattle urine is high in nitrogen, and this contributes to a range of environmental problems.
[...] Behavioural psychology tells us a behaviour is likely to be repeated if followed by a reward, or "reinforcer". That's how we train a dog to come when called.
So if we want to encourage a particular behaviour, such as urinating in a particular place, we should reinforce that behaviour. For our project we applied this idea in much the same way as for toilet training children, using a procedure called "backward chaining".
First, the calves were confined to the toilet area, a latrine pen, and reinforced with a preferred treat when they urinated. This established the pen as an ideal place to urinate.
The calves were then placed in an alley outside the pen, and once again reinforced for entering the pen and urinating there. If urination began in the alley, it was discouraged by a mildly unpleasant spray of water.
After optimising the training, seven out of the eight calves we trained learned to urinate in the latrine pen – and they learned about as quickly as human children do.
The calves received only 15 days of training and the majority learned the full set of skills within 20 to 25 urinations, which is quicker than the toilet-training time for three- and four-year-old children.
[...] Our research is a proof of concept. Cattle can be toilet trained, and without much difficulty. But scaling up the method for practical application in agriculture involves two further challenges, which will be the focus in the next stage of our project.
[...] The more urine we can capture, the less we’ll need to reduce cattle numbers to meet emissions targets – and the less we'll have to compromise on the availability of milk, butter, cheese and meat from cattle.
Journal Reference:
Neele Dirksen, Jan Langbein, Lars Schrader. et al.Learned control of urinary reflexes in cattle to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions Current Biology [Open] (DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2021.07.011)
(Score: 2, Offtopic) by Gaaark on Sunday September 19 2021, @02:59AM (2 children)
My son is severely autistic and he LOVES being clean: he toilet trained in no time (#1 & #2).
He loves baths and showers and 'asks' for them after a poo.... or sometimes after masturbating.....now, if only we could train him to masturbate into a sock or something....... (that smell in his room.... like rotting salmon or something..... gag-barf).
But, hey! Don't have a cow, dude!
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Sunday September 19 2021, @04:19AM
Would he appreciate a bidet? Also, I'm guessing he doesn't have problems with odd smells? I'm probably conflating points on the spectrum.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday September 19 2021, @04:38AM
Every kid is different. One potty trained himself before we even knew it was happening. About as quickly as he could stand up and climb on the potty, he was trained. Another continued having accidents up to school age. The other showed normal progress, totally unremarkable. I can't tell that intelligence had anything to do with it. It's more self awareness than smarts, IMO.
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by RantyRantington on Sunday September 19 2021, @05:08AM
So... does this mean we can eat toddlers now?
(Score: 0, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 19 2021, @05:22AM (10 children)
You might need tasers in place of the water spray.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 19 2021, @06:47AM (2 children)
A woman hates it when you call her a 'cow'.
Manners.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 19 2021, @06:55AM
She hates it even more if you call her a sow. Stick with bitch, sometimes they even joke about being bitchy.
https://www.etsy.com/market/funny_bitch_shirt [etsy.com]
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday September 20 2021, @03:31PM
Devin Nunes will have a cow.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Magic Oddball on Sunday September 19 2021, @08:43AM (5 children)
In San Francisco, the problem is that the city had shut down virtually all of the public toilets a decade or two ago, so the homeless were left with nowhere else to go to the bathroom. Once new toilets finally began to be installed over the past year or so, the situation largely went away in the neighborhoods around them, with the busier toilets being used over 200 times per day.
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 19 2021, @10:09AM (4 children)
If they charged $2.00 per visit they could raise $400 per day, per toilet. Then they could use that money to eliminate the homeless problem.
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 19 2021, @11:38AM (2 children)
Lack of spending money is not the cause of city crime or vagrancy.
It's the city's policies. They DON'T WANT to eliminate vagrancy.
(Score: 1, Troll) by Runaway1956 on Sunday September 19 2021, @08:52PM (1 child)
Odd. We've been told a million times that crime and poverty go hand-in-hand. Progressives especially (not exclusively) tell us that we need $expensive program to pump money into poor neighborhoods to combat crime. If people just had money, they wouldn't turn to crime.
Actually, I'm not sure where I stand on that issue. I know there are a lot of poor people who are honest, and there are a lot of wealthier people who are freaking criminals waiting to be convicted. Wealth doesn't determine moral character, that's for certain. Still, people who have zero money are probably going to turn to theft if that's the only way to fill their bellies. Is stealing food immoral?
As for city policies, we could make a case that government has little idea what effect their policies have. They're guessing, basing their policies on popular theory most of the time. For the most part, those policies that appeal to liberals and progressives are failures. Witness Baltimore, Detroit, and San Francisco.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Freeman on Monday September 20 2021, @02:39PM
In the event that stealing food is immoral. It's also immoral to let said person starve. I think of it as more of a Catch-22 issue. We have Government, at least make sure people can feed themselves. I mean, that's right up there on the things people need to live. They can live without a Cellphone. They can't live without food. I'd rather we "wasted" money on making sure there was no hunger in the USA, than a lot of the junk we spend taxes on.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 19 2021, @01:12PM
Nik-O-Lok Corporate Song...
It's a penny for a fart,
Nickel for a piss,
Dime-if you gotta use the toilet.
However, all too many times, I saw where people abandoned their property right below the Nic-O-Lok in lieu of the requested coin.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 20 2021, @12:34AM
How the fuck is that "offtopic"? I think it's a hell of a lot more important to give humans a place to pee than the damn cows. Hell, they're all locked up in tiny cages, put a fuckin' catheter in 'em!
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 19 2021, @02:27PM (3 children)
Even though it sounds inexpensive, it does require some effort and initiative to put in place. will ranchers use it?
(Score: 1) by shrewdsheep on Sunday September 19 2021, @04:42PM (2 children)
It can potentially be automated. I was just recently visiting a farm where cows were milked fully automatically be a robot. They have an incentive to be milked, for sure, but another main incentive was tasty food served while the robot milked. Put the calves into a confine, monitor the calves by an AI and punish uncontrolled peeing. Serve a treat in the toilet area and they will learn in no time. If the same is achieved for the crapping, this could potentially reduce the environmental footprint of dairy farms quite a bit.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 19 2021, @06:21PM
Will this work on Devin Nunes?
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 19 2021, @10:07PM
I showed this article to our neighbor that owns a dairy farm. He laughed because they already train their cows to use the bathroom in certain areas. It isn't as small of an area as the ones shown in the article but not too far off for the size of the herd. Apparently, herd behavior of the cattle helps once you hit a critical mass because most untrained cattle will follow the trained ones out of instinct and will learn how to do it just by watching the others. Now he has to just make sure the various reward dispensers are full, but that is a much easier job than cleaning up piles of waste and less monotonous than the parlor. Although it is worth nothing that automated systems are not a drop-in replacement for traditional husbandry practices.