For the first time, they observe an orangutan healing its wounds with medicinal plants.
For the first time, scientists had the opportunity to observe something like this. The animal applies medicinal plants to wounds with the clear intention of healing them. Several species of primates have previously been observed to swallow, they chewed or rubbed their bodies with plants that had medicinal properties, but no one had ever seen any of them apply them to a recent wound.
Unusual behavior was observed in a male Sumatran orangutan (Pongo abelii), who applied pre-chewed leaves of the species Allamanda (Fibraurea tinctoria), a climbing plant used in traditional medicine to treat wounds and diseases such as dysentery, diabetes and malaria.
The discovery, published in the journal Scientific Reports, represents the first report of treating open wounds in a wild animal using a plant with known medicinal properties.
Led by Isabelle Laumer of the Max Planck Institute for Animal Behavior in Konstanz, Germany, the researchers observed an orangutan named Rakus in June 2022 in the Suak Balimbing research area in Gunung Leuser National Park in Indonesia.
This is how Rakus was cured
Rakus chewed the stem and leaves of the plant and then repeatedly applied the resulting liquid to a wound on his right cheek sustained three days earlier over the course of seven minutes. Rakus then smeared the chewed leaves on the wound until it closed completely, and continued to feed on the plant for another half hour.
In the days that followed, researchers found no signs of infection in the wound, which closed within five days and completely healed within a month.
Because more than 30 minutes orangutan repeatedly used the chewed plant On the injured cheek, but not on other parts of the body, Laumer and his team have no doubt that Ruckus was deliberately trying to heal the wound.
Five days after applying the chewed plant, the wound closed without signs of infection. Within a month, the cheek had completely healed.
Previous studies have already revealed the antibacterial, anti-inflammatory, antifungal and antioxidant properties of Fibraurea tincica, and there is no doubt that chewing the leaves helped Rakus. reduce pain and inflammation caused by the wound and promote its healing. The authors do not know whether this was the first time Rakus treated one of his wounds, or whether this behavior was learned from other orangutans.
According to researchers, the fact that Rakus will deliberately treat his wound suggests that this behavior may have evolved in the common ancestor of humans and apes.