Natures wonders: chimps self-medicate (Introduction)

by David Turell , Monday, June 24, 2024, 15:41 (150 days ago) @ David Turell

Use specific plants:

https://www.science.org/content/article/chimps-use-more-plant-medicines-any-other-anima...

"For several decades, evidence has accumulated that animals turn to medicinal plants to relieve their ailments. Chimpanzees (and some other species) swallow leaves to mechanically clear the gut of parasites. Chimps also rely on the ingested pith of an African relative of the daisy, Vernonia amygdalina, to rid themselves of intestinal worms. Dolphins rub against antibacterial corals and sponges to treat skin infections. And recently, a male Sumatran orangutan was observed chewing the leaves of Fibraurea tinctoria, a South Asian plant with antibacterial and anti-inflammatory properties, and dabbing the juice onto a wound.

“'The paper provides important new findings about self-medication behavior in wild chimpanzees,” a topic that’s still relatively unknown, says Isabelle Laumer, a cognitive biologist at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior and lead author on the orangutan self-medication paper who was not involved in the new chimp research.

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"The team—made up of researchers from the University of Oxford and groups at other institutions in Europe, Japan, and Uganda—tested samples of all the plants eaten by sick chimps for antibiotic and anti-inflammatory properties. They also reviewed the scientific literature for reports of use in local traditional medicines. A. boonei, the dogbane tree, exhibited antibacterial and anti-inflammatory activity in vitro. Traditional medicine practitioners in Africa use the plant to treat bacterial infections, gastro-intestinal issues, snakebites, and asthma. The fern proved to have anti-inflammatory properties as well, which might have benefited the chimp’s hand injury, but humans haven’t been reported to use it for healing.

"In all, 11 of the 13 plants the team investigated are used in local traditional remedies, boosting the evidence that chimps use plants to help heal, researchers say.

"For all 51 sick chimps, the self-medication appeared to work. “Every individual recovered, and relatively quickly,” says Oxford primatologist Elodie Freymann, the study’s lead author, though she cautions that she can’t be sure their healing was due to the plants.

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"The new plant candidates “need to be looked at in more detail,” acknowledges Michael Huffman, a primatologist at Nagasaki University and a co-author of the study. But the evidence to date suggests the ill chimps select plants that could alleviate their symptoms, he says.

"Researchers aren’t sure how animals learn to self-medicate. Huffman says some research suggests illness triggers an instinctual craving for bitter-tasting foods, which often have antiparasitic or antibiotic properties. But John Arnason, a phytochemist and ethnopharmacology expert at the University of Ottawa, thinks “nonhuman primates may have used the same trial and observation methods humans have used to find effective medicines, then passed on the information to their offspring.'”

Original article: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0305219

"These results, integrated with associated observations from eight months of behavioral data, provide further evidence for the presence of self-medicative resources in wild chimpanzee diets. This study addresses the challenge of distinguishing preventative medicinal food consumption from therapeutic self-medication by integrating pharmacological, observational, and health monitoring data—an essential interdisciplinary approach for advancing the field of zoopharmacognosy."

Comment: I agree with Arnason above: the chimps used trial and error to find these solutions to illnesses and wound care.