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Science correspondent, BBC News
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Chimpanzees in Uganda have been observed using medicinal plants – in multiple ways – to treat open wounds and other injuries.
University of Oxford scientists, working with a local team in the Budongo Forest, filmed and recorded incidents of the animals using plants for first aid, both on themselves and occasionally on each other.
Their research builds on the discovery last year that chimps seek out and eat certain plants to self-medicate.
The scientists also compiled decades of scientific observations to create a catalogue of the different ways in which chimpanzees use “forest first aid”.
Researchers say the study, which is published in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, adds to a growing body of evidence that primates, including chimps, orangutans and gorillas, use natural medicines in a number of ways to stay healthy in the wild.
Lead researcher Elodie Freymann explained there was “a whole behavioural repertoire that chimpanzees use when they’re sick or injured in the wild – to treat themselves and to maintain hygiene”.
“Some of these include the use of plants that can be found here,” she explained. “The chimpanzees dab them on their wounds or chew the plants up, and then apply the chewed material to the open injury.”
The researchers studied footage of a very young, female chimpanzee chewing plant material and applying it to an injury on its mother’s body.
They also found records of chimpanzees tending to the wounds of other animals they weren’t related to. This is particularly exciting, explained Dr Freymann,