Deep in the Sumatran jungle, an extraordinary discovery has revealed the intelligence of orangutans and their ability to use natural resources for your benefit. A recent study published in Scientific Reports has captured global attention by documenting a wild orangutan, known as Rakus, for the first time, andworking on a treatment with a plant with medicinal properties to treat his own wound. This event not only demonstrates the advanced cognition of these primates but could also offer clues about how humans might have learned from animals in the past.
The curious incident occurred in the Gunung Leuser National Park in Indonesia, where Rakus, after suffering a facial injury during a fight, was observed directly applying the juice of the chewed leaves of the plant Fibraurea tinctoria, known locally as akar kuning. This is used by indigenous people to treat diseases from diabetes to malaria. The surprising thing about Rakus is that he applied this treatment on two occasions, resulting in a complete healing of the wound in just eight days.
Humans learned medicine from animals
This self-treatment stands out as a significant finding since, according to the research team at the Max Planck Institute for Animal Behavior, such behavior had never been observed in other orangutans in the park over 21 years of studies. Michael Huffman, a researcher of animal self-medication at the Nagasaki Institute of Tropical Medicine, highlights the importance of this discovery by pointing out that self-medication is a behavior observed in many species, reinforcing the notion that Animals have medicinal knowledge that may precede and possibly have influenced human practices.
Orangutans, like other great apes, have demonstrated a remarkable understanding of the medicinal properties of plants in their environment. In Borneo, for example, orangutans have been observed consuming plant species with known medicinal properties, which reinforces the idea that these practices may not be isolated but part of a broader knowledge and possibly shared between different groups of primates. The connection between the observation of behaviors in animals and the adaptation of these behaviors by humans raises a reconsideration of the origins of medicine.
Rakus’s ability to identify and use a specific medicinal plant to self-treat suggests that such practices may have been present in the common ancestors of orangutans and humans. This event not only opens new doors for research in animal cognition and ethnobotany but also provides a fascinating perspective on the evolution of medicinal knowledge.
