Scientists around the world are carrying out research and surveys of every kind to save the environment, searching day and night for ways to protect the planet. Sometimes they find solutions and sometimes they don't.

This time a team of scientists from Germany's Institute for Farm Animal Biology (FBN) and Friedrich Loeffler Institute (FLI) and New Zealand's University of Auckland say that much of the work of protecting the environment would be done if cows could be taught to use a toilet.

A CNN report said cow waste contains high levels of ammonia, which is harmful to the environment. Training cows to relieve themselves in a particular place would therefore help protect the environment.

The scientists have already begun training cows for this, and have named it "Molo training".

In the research paper published on Monday (September 14) in the biology journal Current Biology, FBN animal psychologist Jan Langbein said: "Although livestock cannot control when they relieve themselves, it is possible to train the habit through special training. Animals are very intelligent, so learning may even be easy for them."

To teach a cow to use the toilet, it is given sugar-mixed water or crushed barley as a reward after it relieves itself in the right place.

FBN researcher Neil Dirksen said that before a cow is taken anywhere, it is taken to the toilet so that it can relieve itself there.

A cow produces an average of 30 to 40 kg of dung and 8 gallons of urine a day. This waste mixes with the soil and turns into nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas.

Source: Dhaka Tribune. First published in Bengali on The Agro News.