Chimpanzees have been recorded eating various medicinal plants to self-medicate. Now, a research team from Oxford and a local team in Budongo forest, Uganda, has recorded chimpanzees using medicinal plants as first aid on open wounds and other injuries, both on themselves and other chimpanzees. The scientists made a catalogue of different ways in which chimpanzees use first aid in forests by compiling years of scientific observations.
Researchers say that the study, published in Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, is a new addition to a growing number of records that primates like chimps, orangutans, and gorillas use natural medicine in a large number of ways to stay healthy. Lead researcher Elodie Freymann explained there was “a whole behavioural repertoire that chimpanzees use when they’re sick or injured in the wild – to treat themselves and to maintain hygiene”. The chimpanzees chew up the plant material before applying it to wounds, or simply dab the leaves on open injuries. The researchers recorded a young chimpanzee tending to wounds on her mother’s body by chewing and applying chewed-up plant materials. They also recorded unrelated chimpanzees tending to one another’s wounds, which signals the presence of empathy and compassion even in wild animals.
Dr Freymann and her colleagues studied hundreds of written observations from a logbook at the field station in the forest site, which is northwest of the capital, Kampala. This record of anecdotal evidence dates back to the 1990s – local field staff, visitors, and researchers have noted any interesting behavior they have observed. There are stories of chimpanzees helping out other chimpanzees with injuries, leaf-dabbing on open wounds, and even hygienic practices like wiping after defecating. In some instances, chimpanzees were found to remove snares from another chimpanzee.
This same group of researchers identified some plants that chimps ate to self-medicate. In most of those plants, the researchers discovered antibacterial properties. Chimpanzees are also not the only primates recorded using self-medication, as orangutans have also been identified to use chewed-up plant material to heal a facial wound.
Scientists believe that studying wild-ape behavior might open new avenues for developing medicines from medicinal plant extracts.
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