Chimpanzees eat at least a dozen plants for their medicinal, not nutritional, value. In the picture, one of the studied chimpanzees eats fruits of 'F. exasperate.'ELODIE FREYMANN
“It is important for us to remember that wounds are not the only ailments that animals suffer from, and there will be internal diseases for which animals will need to self-medicate,” says the Oxford researcher. “This can be more difficult to study than wounds, because you can’t physically see what’s wrong with the animal you’re studying, so to do this you need to take a multidisciplinary approach, analyzing behavioral anecdotes alongside health data and pharmacological outcomes,” she adds.
“The natural world is full of medicines that we depend on, as are our non-human neighbors. If we want to keep these animals safe, we must protect their medicine cabinet,” she continues, connecting the story of Rakus the orangutan in Sumatra, Indonesia, to the chimps of Uganda.
This “medicine cabinet” should also be protected for selfish reasons. Schultz, who is now investigating the use of medicinal plants by mountain gorillas, points out that “finding a blockbuster drug from natural materials is often like finding the needle in the haystack; however, our work has contributed to early-stage drug discovery.”
Of course, there is still a long way to go; an extract can contain more than 1,000 different substances. “We don’t know [yet] which substances are present, whether they are new to science and how potent they are. There may also be synergistic effects, i.e. a combination of substances causes the effect, not a single one,” says Schultz.
What’s more, the researchers have only provided scientific evidence of the extracts’ efficacy in vitro and still has to isolate the active ingredient(s) and determine whether they could be used in animal trials. Schultz concludes: “there is a long way to go, but in theory, we humans can learn from our closest animal ancestors and, one day, human lives may be saved thanks to the knowledge of chimpanzees.”
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