Seeing an orangutan in the jungle of Borneo will always be a unique experience, even if it is through a video of animal life. But much more impressive is observing him self-medicating with local plants to treat his wounds. So much so that social networks around the world recently made Rakus viral, a male of this species that scientists recorded in a forest reserve in Indonesia repeatedly rubbing chewed leaves of a medicinal plant on a facial wound.
It was the first known observation of a wild animal using plants to heal itself. Another evidence that humans are not the only ones who use them for medicinal purposes. Rakus lives in Gunung Leuser National Park on the island of Sumatra and is around 35 years old. Investigators first noticed the wound on his face on June 25, 2022, when they saw him begin self-medicating behavior. Records of animals medicating themselves are rare, even more so if it is to treat injuries.
Details of the observation were published this week in the journal Scientific Reports. The plant that Rakus used, Fibraurea tinctoria Known as Akar kuning or yellow root, it is also used by people throughout Southeast Asia to treat malaria, diabetes, and other conditions. According to research, it has anti-inflammatory and antibacterial properties.
Orangutans rarely eat the plant. However, Rakus ingested a small amount and also covered the wound several times. And the treatment turned out to be very effective, because five days after the wound was noticed, it had already closed and in less than a month it healed without any sign of infection.
Plants and other concoctions
Michael Huffman, a visiting professor at the Institute of Tropical Medicine at Nagasaki University in Japan, agreed that it is the first published study to show that an animal uses a plant with known biomedical properties to treat a wound. Experts had seen a group of more than two dozen chimpanzees in Gabon, Central Africa, treating a wound, not with grass, but by chewing flying insects and applying them to the injury.
Biologists had also described orangutans using medicinal plants, but in a different way. In 2017, scientists reported that six of these primates, also from Borneo, rubbed the chewed leaves of a shrub with anti-inflammatory and analgesic properties on their legs and arms, probably to soothe sore muscles. “The overall application patterns are similar, and that’s good for our understanding of the species’ propensity for this type of medication behavior,” Huffman said.
Examples of self-medication in primates remain rare. Chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and white-handed gibbons are known to occasionally eat whole, rough leaves. It is believed to help them expel parasites. Chimpanzees have also been seen chewing the bitter pith of a plant called Vernonia amygdalina to treat worm infections.
animal herbalist
Mammals such as monkeys, jackals, wild boars or elephants often practice self-healing, as do some reptiles and certain types of birds. Scientists have a pharmacological interest in these behaviors, as they are convinced that observing how animals heal themselves can help discover new medications.
It has been documented that mammals purge with vegetables to combat stomach problems. They know perfectly the herbs that allow them to cure their most recurring ailments. It is well known that not only dogs and cats, but also their wild relatives wolves, lions and tigers, among others, eat herbs when they have intestinal problems.
In reality, the use of natural medicines by animals is ancient. This statement can be deduced from the common names of numerous herbs. Examples of this are catnip or catmint (Nepeta cataria) and the grass Agropyron repens, called “dog grain” in Italian and “dog grass” in English. Also plants of the genus Epimedium sp., which in the latter language are called “hot goats” and which, as expected, have been used since ancient times as aphrodisiacs.
Catnip has a very strong smell that attracts cats and puts them in a kind of short-lived trance. Apart from its sedative and possibly hallucinogenic effect, cats use it for its digestive properties and to expel hairballs that accumulate in their stomach. Coincidence or wisdom, herbalists recommend this plant to combat insomnia and stomach pains.
For any evil
Due to the regurgitant effect similar to that of catnip, there are other plants that are ingested not only by cats, but also by dogs and their wild relatives. Wolves, for example, eat nettles for this purpose. They could act as physical purges of intestinal parasites, an action that, as we will see later, has been demonstrated in certain plants used by African monkeys.
The usefulness of the roots of the Asian plant is more documented Rauwolfia serpentina as an antidote to snake venom for some animals, including wild boars and mongooses, whose knowledge of this herb is recorded in a 3,000-year-old Sanskrit text. It seems that mongooses feed on this plant before going hunting for cobras. It must have been the knowledge of this behavior that led to including the Rauwolfia in the Ayurvedic pharmacopoeia of India.
Animals not only prepare antivenoms, but also use herbs to face motherhood. According to researcher Holly Dublin of the World Wildlife Fund, pregnant female African elephants look for a specific species of tree, most likely to induce childbirth. After following a very uniform diet throughout pregnancy, one of these females studied by Dublin traveled 27 km in a single day to find that tree from the borage family and devour it almost entirely. Dublin also discovered that Kenyan women make infusions from its leaves to induce childbirth.
wild dermatology
Capuchin monkeys in South America rub their bodies with aromatic plant species loaded with bioactive substances capable of reducing mycoses and bacterial infections and combating ectoparasites. Many species of birds also line their nests with fresh, green leaves and stems that they renew frequently, as something vital for the survival of their chicks. Northern starlings in North America take this behavior to the extreme of carefully selecting some plant species and disregarding others. Among these plants is the wild carrot (Daucus carota), the yarrow (Achillea millefolia) and other species known in phytotherapy for their astringency and their usefulness in the external treatment of sores, inflammations and other skin diseases.
Another bird that fills its nests with aromatic and astringent plants is the stork called American tantalum (American mycteria). Among the plants used is the swamp cypress (Taxodium distichum), poison ivy (Toxicodendron radicals) and the wax tree (Myrica cerifera). They are used by local herbalists to cure skin lesions. Despite having almost no effect on the external parasites of the chicks, they positively influence their survival.
The dermatological use that some birds give to certain poisonous insects is also well established. More than two hundred species of songbirds pick up ants with their beaks and vigorously rub their feathers. The common jay spreads its wings, lies down and rolls around on the anthill. The most reasonable hypothesis indicates that its objective would be to acquire the secretions of ants, due to their insecticidal, acaricidal, fungicidal and bactericidal properties.
Supplements and more
Brown bears in Canada and Alaska often suck clay soil. Widespread in the animal world, geophagy or ingestion of soil has been interpreted as a way to correct dietary deficiencies. However, there is increasing evidence that this is not its only usefulness.
Giraffes regularly come to the termite mounds to eat bites of their clay-rich soil. This is a very effective deactivator of dietary toxins or pathogenic microbes. African elephants travel hundreds of kilometers to find salt caves. Sodium is essential to balance the excess potassium in the leaves they consume. Sumatran orangutans also go to great lengths to ingest certain soils. But it is not sodium that they are looking for, but rather traces of arsenic to strengthen their antiparasitic defenses.
For animals, plants are not just about medicine, but about experiencing sensations. Many use them to get high or drunk. Jackals, for example, are heavy consumers of psilocybin mushrooms, and reindeer and dairy cows of the equally hallucinogenic fly agaric (Amanita muscaria). Wild boars, for their part, dig for the roots of a psychotropic plant: Tabernanthe iboga. Likewise, jaguars nibble on the unpleasant bark of the no less hallucinogenic Banisteriopsis caapi.
JM Faricla, director of the Society of Applied Ethnopsychology, assures that cows, buffaloes and various antelopes delight in the opium-producing poppy. Just like canaries and pigeons with hemp seeds and mongooses with mushrooms rich in bufotenin. Elephants really like the fermented fruits of palm trees because of the alcohol they contain.
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