Doctor ape

Humans were not the first doctors

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The art of healing isn't uniquely human. Chimpanzees and orang-utans use plants for medication and they could teach us a thing or two.

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Experts observing apes in Africa have reported seeing sick animals selecting plants they would normally avoid and within a few days their illness disappeared. Professor Michael Huffman from Kyoto University, Japan, happened to be watching a constipated chimpanzee one day. She ate the root of a noxious tree and was back to normal within days.

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Professor Huffman believes he was watching the evolutionary beginnings of human medicine and that it can provide insight into new treatments. The root was later examined for its medicinal properties and found to be affective against several illnesses and is used by local people.

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In Borneo Dr Willie Smits, a tropical forest specialist claims he once spotted an orang-utan clutching its head in pain until it ate a particular. Dr Smits was convinced the animal had cured itself of a headache. Next time he suffered one himself he ate the same flower and his headache went.

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Animal self healing in known as zoopharmacognosy and Professor Huffman has gathered evidence of what he calls his 'Velcro theory'. It has long been known that chimpanzees sometimes swallow leaves whole that emerge intact but with concertina folds in them. Professor Huffman says that the indigestible leaves pick up bugs and worms as they pass through the intestine, which are carried out in dung by the leaves bristly underside and in the folds. He has also shown that only sick chimpanzees eat the leaves. They eat the leaves in the morning when their stomachs are empty; the inedible leaves pass through rapidly carrying the bugs with them.

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Not only do the chimpanzees treat themselves but they do so in a way probably more effective than modern medicine. Drugs usually only have a single mechanism of action, they just do one thing. The disadvantage of this is that this often stimulates the diseases to develop a counter strategy of attack. But the plants that the apes use contain lots of compounds which all have different affects on the disease. Suppressing disease through a multi pronged attack and so thwarting diseases to develop resistance could be a new way of treating humans and livestock experts believe.

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Should studies of alternative medicines be pursued or should we just stick to human knowledge Would you trust a treatment that had been discovered in the animal world first What about your experiences, have you seen animals apparently treating themselves Let everyone know what you think, click here.