An item that caught my interest this week was a new article (Freyman et al, 2024) about how wild chimpanzees sometimes supplement their usual diets with plant materials such as tree bark that they would not normally eat. These materials are neither appetising nor nutritious, but they are rich in bioactive phytochemicals. The interesting thing is that the individuals who eat them seem to be self-medicating to treat specific ailments.
Animal self-medication (zoopharmacognosy)is not confined to our closest ape relatives, but exists in other animalspecies considered far less intelligent. Shurkin (2014) for example, mentionshow dogs will sometimes eat grass as an emetic. Another particularly weirdexample is how some birds have learned to take cigarette butts to their nests,where the nicotine helps to counter mites.
Some zoopharmacognosy examplesdemonstrate considerable sophistication. Bonobos (pygmy chimps) have a specialway of consuming Manniophyton fulvum leaves to treat parasites,swallowing them whole to avoid contact with the lips where these leaves cancause sores. Furthermore, xoopharmacognosy is not just by ingestion.Morrogh-Bernard(2017) describes how the Orang utan rubs its limbs with pulp of Dracaena cantleyi, a plant of the asparagus family (Asparagaceae) that contains steroidalsaponins with anti-inflammatory activities. Nearby human populations makepoultices of the same plant to treat joint pain.
So is zoopharmacognosy instinct or learned behavior passed down the animal generations? Plants make bioactive molecules for their own reasons, but they serve as materials and inspiration for modern pharmaceuticals and cosmetics, which has evolved from traditional ethnic medicine that developed around the world.
Might Orang utans havelearned herbal medicine from their human neighbours? Perhaps it happened theother way round! There is a lesson here.
Further reading
🐵 Freymann E et al (2024).Pharmacological and behavioral investigation of putative self-medicative plantsin Budongo chimpanzee diets. PloS one, 19(6), e0305219. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0305219
🐵 Shurkin J (2014). Newsfeature: Animals that self-medicate. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA, 111(49),17339–17341. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1419966111
🐵 Morrogh-BernardHC et al (2017). Self-medication by orang-utans (Pongo pygmaeus) usingbioactive properties of Dracaena cantleyi. Scientific reports, 7(1),16653. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-16621-w
🐵 Queiroz A (2022) Biomimicry& Cosmetics: when nature gives us inspiration. HPC Today 17(2). 54-57, https://lnkd.in/d5jFvmWM
