Rakus is a 30-year-old orangutan who lives in the jungle of Sumatra, Indonesia, and is attracting the attention of scientists because This is the first time a primate has been observed healing a wound on its own..
In the case of this ape, it was detected that He had an injury below his right eye, caused after a fight and, within two weeks, he managed to heal the wound with a remedy that he made himself. from a wild plant, as published in the latest issue of the magazine “Scientific Reports”.
In June 2023, experts following the lives of 130 of these large primates living in the wild in Gunung Leuser National Park discovered that Rakus had a deep abrasion on his face, with part of it raw.. A wound caused “probably during a fight with a neighborhood male,” said Isabelle Laumer, a primatologist at the Max-Planck Institute from Germany and author of the study on her cure, in dialogue with AFP.
Three days after being wounded, Rakus began to chew the leaves of a vine locally known as “Akar kuning”. But, instead of swallowing them, she spit the juice made by chewing onto her fingers and placed it as if it were an ointment on the injury, and then covered it with liana pulp.
Five days later, the wound had closedand two weeks later, only a slight scar was visible.
Rakus used the juice of a plant to heal a wound.By: twitter
A well-known remedy in the area
The remedy used has nothing miraculous, according to the specialist. In the Sumatra region, this vine is used to cure “different diseases such as malaria”, due to its antibacterial and anti-inflammatory properties.
And, according to the study, it is the first “documented case of treatment of a wound with a type of plant that has active biological substances by a wild animal.”
The primate healed only one wound.
