The Fibraurea tinctoria It is a climbing plant found in the jungles of Southeast Asia. Many of the local communities use it as a medicinal herb. With it they fight various diseases, from diabetes to malaria, including digestive problems. Modern science has found among its components substances, diterpenoid furans, with antibacterial, anti-inflammatory, antioxidant and fungicidal properties. It also has high concentrations of two alkaloids, in particular protoberberine, the origin of berberine, a compound easy to find in parapharmacies and herbalists and which has been called natural Ozempic. In the extreme north of Sumatra (Indonesia) they have observed for the first time how a male orangutan with an ugly wound under the eye created a poultice with leaves of F. tinctoria which he had chewed and applied it. In a few days, the ulcer closed and in two months the scar was barely visible.
This pioneer male is called RakusSumatran orangutan (I put abelii), a species of which only 7,500 survivors remain. They do not know his exact age, but he must have been born in the eighties of the last century. It has its territory in the jungle Suaq Balimbing. In 2021 she had already developed her cheeks, those huge cheeks that indicate sexual maturity. On the morning of June 22, 2022, researchers heard one of those rare vocal fights between two males in which they use particular vocalizations to say here I am, this territory is mine and the females it houses only mate with me. At noon they saw the injury for the first time. under the eye, Rakus He had a deep wound. Although they did not witness the fight, observers on the ground believe it was the result of the morning’s shouting match. Three days later they observed a new behavior: Rakus plucked leaves F. tinctoria and, after chewing them for a while, without swallowing them, he applied their juice to the wound. Shortly afterwards, when the flies were feeding on the open sore, she chewed new leaves again until she made a poultice with which he covered the entire ulcer in green.
“Curiously, Rakus “He also rested more than usual while he was injured,” says Isabelle Laumer, researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Animal Behavior (Germany) and first author of the study. “Sleep positively affects wound healing, since during sleep the release of growth hormone, protein synthesis and cell division increase,” she adds. Adult male orangutans spend half their time resting or sleeping. But during his convalescence, Rakus He was at rest 30% more than in the months before and after the injury. The day after applying the plaster, he ate stems and leaves of the same plant, something he did not do again in the days that followed. In the following days they did not detect that the wound became infected and, by June 30, it had already closed. In mid-July, only a small scar remained and he discharged himself, returning to his usual pace of activity. All the details of the healing process Rakus They relate them in a work published in the scientific journal Scientific Reports.
According to the authors, this is the first time that this behavior has been recorded. Although there are many species that follow hygiene practices, such as avoiding feces or spoiled water or food, there was no known one with such a direct and concrete intention, with the creation of a healing layer applied to an open wound.
Caroline Schuppli, also from the Max Planck Institute for Animal Behavior, recalls in an email that “in general, there is little evidence of health-related behaviors in orangutans.” However, in the orangutans of neighboring Borneo, considered another species, “it has been observed that individuals from different populations ingest specific plant species that are also used in ethnomedicine for their medical properties,” adds the first author of this research. “Orangutans may have ingested these plants to treat different medical conditions,” she adds.
Rakus also rested more than usual while he was injured.”
Isabelle Laumer, researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Animal Behavior (Germany)
A few years ago, another group of researchers announced that they had observed several female and one male Bornean orangutan (I put pygmaeus) used leaves from a bush, the Dracaena cantleyi, to, mixed with saliva, rub it on the skin. The pharmacological analysis of this plant showed that it contains an inhibitor of cytokine production, thus having anti-inflammatory and analgesic properties. “They used plants with medical properties, but no wounds or skin conditions were observed on the orangutans’ bodies; It is possible that these orangutans used plants to treat pain,” Schuppli recalls. “Our observation is the first documented case of wound treatment by a wild animal with a plant with medicinal properties,” he highlights.
The behavior of Rakus It is truly exceptional and could be what the authors call “a case of individual innovation.” Schuppli suggests an explanation for the origin of this practice: “Some individuals may have accidentally touched their wounds while feeding on this plant and therefore involuntarily applied its juice to them. As the F. tinctoria “It has powerful analgesic effects, they were able to feel immediate pain relief, which would make them repeat the behavior more times.” To settle the issue, they point out, it would be key to observe other orangutans from the group of origin of Rakus. The problem is that that is complicated. In this species, males leave their place and community of birth when they reach the adult phase of their life, sometimes moving hundreds of kilometers away. It is unknown where he was born Rakus and from whom can I learn to heal.
In the archives of the Suaq Balimbing research center they preserve 28,000 hours of observation of about 150 orangutans in the last 21 years. And they’ve never seen what he’s done now Rakus. Laumer, the first author, gives arguments to understand that, being a practice that is difficult to observe, it does not have to be exceptional: “It may be due to the fact that we rarely find injured orangutans in Suaq. Due to the high food availability, high social tolerance among orangutans, and relatively stable social hierarchies (each area is usually inhabited by one dominant male and several females), there are few physical fights and therefore we rarely encounter each other. with injured orangutans.”
Orangutans are not the only great apes that take care of their health. The pioneering primatologist Jane Goodall, in the sixties, observed the presence of leaves of no nutritional interest in the feces of chimpanzees. Decades later it was confirmed that they helped them expel intestinal parasites. In the following years, it has been proven that chimpanzees, bonobos and gorillas ingest plants with some healing capacity. But nothing like what the
y saw between 2019 and 2021 in a group of chimpanzees in Loango National Park (Gabon). During 15 months of observations, they witnessed around twenty occasions in which a member of the group with injuries captured one or more winged insects, immobilized them by tearing off their wings with their mouths, and placed them directly on the wound for a few moments. They also saw how they did it with other injured family members. Although they published the discovery in a short letter in the scientific magazine Current Biologythey could not identify which arthropods they were, so they could not confirm their healing potential.
Simone Pika, from the Institute of Cognitive Science at the University of Osnabrück (Germany) and senior signatory of that letter, now says that her laboratory has a researcher on the ground to answer the questions raised by the communication. “She is collecting data and working with entomologists to identify which insects they are using,” she says in an email. Once identified, “the last step will be to investigate whether there are antibacterial, soothing or anti-inflammatory substances in the species used,” adds Pika, who highlights that the behavior observed is common in this community. They hope to publish the results of her work next year. So the orangutan Rakus could lose the consideration of the first great ape to heal a wound with a medicinal plant.
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