Human Urine, an Animal Repellant?

Can human urine be used as a wild animal repellant? Think about it, all animals have at least one feared and all-powerful enemy, i.e., humans. So the next time you go camping, why not just sprinkle some urine (from a container–I am not suggesting you pee in public :wink: ) around the perimeter of you cabin, bungalow, whatever.

Could this really work?

Thank you in advance to all who reply :slight_smile:

There are lots of animals that live in and among humans with no fear of them. Especially the critters you are trying to keep away when camping (mice, porcupines, skunks). They love the salt in urine. Bear love any interesting smells and will investigate human odors looking for food. There are big predators (cougars, polar bears) who have been known to hunt humans.

It might work for keeping deer away, but deer aren’t a problem. The animals that you want to keep away have no problems with human odors. What animals were you expecting to keep away?

Oddly enough at least one animal is attracted to human urine, reindeer. Why? Who knows. Reports indicate they cannot get enough of the stuff.

It works on rabbits: I had a rabbit resident in my yard and garden, systematically eating its way through my greens, so I peed into a teacup, and went and sprinkled it on the cozy nook under the ash tree where it was accustomed to bed down every night. It took the hint and scarpered.

But…the animals don’t know this.

Only since the invention of gunpowder and effective hunting weapons, which means only for the last few hundred years or so, has homo sapiens been animals’ all-powerful enemy. Homo sapiens has always been animals’ enemy, yes, but not an **all-powerful ** one.

But in order for animals to instinctively fear another creature–in order for them to learn to flee even its urine in horror–they have to have been predated on by that creature for long enough for evolution to teach it to many, many generations of terrified survivors. “That animal tried to kill me last time! Run, run!” Deer instinctively fear lion urine because deer have been preyed upon by big cats for thousands of generations.

But deer do not instinctively fear human smells and automatically flee them–the survivors of a mere 300 years of firearms hunting in the North American deer herd only cautiously move away from human odor in certain contexts, such as during hunting season. In other contexts, they are perfectly fine with it, as witness the many deer eating the expensive landscaping, some of it planted next to National Park Service outhouses and interstate rest areas, across this great nation even as we speak.

And since bears are even less wary of human odors, being top of the food chain themselves, it’s logical to assume that human urine would work even less well on them than it would on deer.

We use fox pee for our garden. Works great on squirrels especially.

Use a juicer on the fox or what?

Better be careful not to get your dick bitten off.

A lot of gardeners will not use predator urine products because of concerns about their being derived from animals kept under crowded, inhumane conditions.

I’d bet that human urine would work as an animal repellent. After all, when’s the last time anybody saw a rabbit or groundhog in the New York subways?

Indeed, it can be quite the contrary: The sacred deer of Nara, Japan.

There was a variety of predator urines at the local feed store. We settled on fox because our main concern was rodents that could squeeze through our garden’s slats.

That would certainly concern both me and my wife. The labelling on what we bought specifically addresses that issue, which impressed us. And it has worked great. We have a yard full of both squirrels and rabbits, but not one vegetable attacked by either critter. (Wish I could say the same for the June bugs.) Shortly after we’d first applied the pee, I witnessed an adolescent rabbit timidly approaching the fence. It stopped, sniffed, jumped high into the air, did a one-eighty, and hopped urgently away.

I used to have a dog we would leave tied on a long run in the backyard when we were gone all day and the weather was nice.

She picked up the habit of digging holes when we were gone; DEEP holes. She dug one that went three or four feet down, deep enough that it always had standing water at the bottom.

So, after much cogitation and four or five beers one night, I wondered if I could somehow “mark” the hole as mine, and she would stay away. And how do dogs mark their territory? By urinating on it, of course! So I went out in the backyard and urinated all over the hole. Around it, in it, etc.

It worked! She avoided the hole after that (as did I). Whenever she’d start digging a new hole, I would go out and similarly “treat” it, and after a week or two she got the message and stopped digging.

Granted, this wasn’t a case of deterring a predator as specified in the OP, but it worked like a charm for this limited purpose.

Looking over replies here, it seems to me, the ones most valuable are the ones where people have had actual results with this. I’m happy to see that some have had some good results. I decided to use it in some of my vegetable beds where rats have been dining on young seedlings. So far its working. I was especially interested in using this because human urine is also a great organic fertilizer! See Gee Whiz: Human Urine Is Shown to Be an Effective Agricultural Fertilizer - Scientific American In another site, I found that the urine must be diluted quite a bit or it can kill plants. I’ve been using it about 12 parts water to 1 part urine.