Scientists first recorded how chimpanzees use plants to treat wounds

Researchers from the University of Oxford, together with African scientists, were for the first time to have been borne by Budongo (Uganda), as chimpanzees use medicinal plants for processing open wounds and other damage, which is said in the journal Frontiers in Ecology. They not only shot on video how primates use plants to provide first aid to themselves and relatives, but also collected perennial scientific observations, creating a catalog of various “forest first aid” methods in chimpanzes.

The leading researcher Elodi Freimann noted that the chimpanzees have a "whole behavioral repertoire that they use for illness or injury in the wild." Primates get wet with plants or chew them, and then apply the resulting mass to open damage. The case turned out to be especially interesting when a very young female chimpanzees chewed herbal material and applied it to the wound of her mother.

Scientists also discovered records of how chimpanzees take care of the wounds of animals that are not related. According to Freimann, "this complements the evidence that wild chimpanzees are capable of empathy." Researchers studied hundreds of written observations, some of which belong to the 1990s and contain descriptions of interesting behavior, including the use of leaves for the processing of wounds and helping other chimpanzees in removing hunting loops from the limbs.

Earlier, the same team of researchers identified plants that chimpanzees specially sought and consumed when injuries. Scientists took samples of these plants, analyzed and found that most of them have antibacterial properties. It is noteworthy that chimpanzees are not the only inhuman primates that have knowledge about plant medicine. A recent study showed how wild orangutan used chewed leaf material for the treatment of wound on the muzzle.

“The more we learn about the behavior and intelligence of the chimpanzees, the more, I think, we begin to understand how little we people are in fact know about nature,” Freimann emphasized. Scientists believe that the study of the behavior of wild primates and knowledge about plants that chimpanzees are used for illness or injury will help in the search for new drugs.

Earlier, researchers found that the chimpanzees are able to drum on trees with regular rhythm. Primatologists from the University of St. Andrews and the CNRS Cognitive Institute of CNRS analyzed 371 episode of the “drum” activity of chimpanzees and came to the conclusion that the monkeys use trees as instruments, creating characteristic low-frequency sounds spreading to a distance of more than a kilometer through the jungle, for remote communication.