It occurred to me today that a number of animals use urine as a territorial marker. Obviously, dogs running about smelling fire hydrants aren’t as averse to the odor as we are, but I don’t really know about other animals. I was thinking it might just be an issue of humans spending more time in enclosed spaces than most animals, but I really just don’t know. Also, poo - we avoid it, monkeys throw it. Where does the rest of the animal kingdom fall?
Well, plenty of animals avoid the smell of predator urine, or so the gardening supply catalogs would have you believe. And my aunt told me the squirrels wouldn’t eat my plants if I went and peed on them. (I made my boyfriend do it. We have bold squirrels, or he has sorry-ass urine.)
I have kept mice out of a green house by sprinkling used cat litter (after the poop was scooped) around its outside walls…
In Farley Mowat’s “Never Cry Wolf”, the act of peeing around the camp site was found to be important in keeping wolves away.
Still chuckling at “his sorry-ass urine”…
I’ve only heard of that in monkeys that are confined in zoos, especially rather dreary ones – small, cells, bare walls, maybe a few swings or perches, but basically a mind-numbingly boring isolation cell. It’s not surprising that monkeys locked up in such environments would be driven to such actions.
Has anyone ever reported this about monkeys in a natural setting?
Hmmm… true enough. Well, let’s restrict it to same-species urine, then.
As for the monkey poo-flinging, you’re telling me the Simpson’s aren’t a reliable cite? Fine, well, wiki says gorillas and chimps will occasionally eat their poo (no cite, though), so hows about that? I know rabbits also eat some of their poo for another digestive pass (although there’s a distinction between first pass and second pass poo), so there’s at least *less *aversion there.
I think there’s an important distinction between avoiding urine because it came from a certain predator and avoiding urine because it smells bad. The reason it smells bad to us, I assume, is because it is bad for us. I’d also be interested in seeing if there are any animals that have this evolutionary advantage. I can imagine that plenty do. I know my hamsters got very restless and annoyed if the cage hadn’t been cleaned in a while and cats bury poo, I think, for hygiene reasons.
Not really too bad. It’s mainly sterile, and mostly water. If you are trapped in a lifeboat and run out of water, you are better off drinking urine than seawater, I understand.
No, that’s mainly a matter of protection from predators – reducing evidence of their presence in the vicinity.
I read that it has to be carnivore urine to scare off the plant-eaters. So if your boyfriend was a vegetarian, the squirrels would just go, “Yeah, whatever,” and keep nibbling.