Orangutan Treats Wound With Self-Made Remedy

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According to the study

Orangutans Treat Their Wounds With Self-Made Remedy

For the first time, scientists observed an orangutan treating itself with a medicinal plant. — For the first time, scientists observed an orangutan treating itself with a medicinal plant. Photo: picture alliance / ASSOCIATED PRESS / Armas

Dennis Agyemang Editor

May 3, 2024, 10:34 am | Read time: 2 minutes

It’s a sensation! For the first time, researchers have observed an injured orangutan seemingly consciously creating a remedy and treating its own wound with it.

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Researchers have observed for the first time how an orangutan treated a gaping facial wound on its own. This remarkable scene took place in a protected rainforest area in Indonesia, where evidence was recently found suggesting that the extinct Javan tiger might still exist (PETBOOK reported). In June 2022, a male Sumatran orangutan named Rakus sustained a facial wound, likely during a fight with another male orangutan. The primate treated the wound himself using a plant in a manner akin to medical care.

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Orangutan Treats Wound Independently with Medicinal Plant

Scientists at the Suaq Balimbing research station observed Rakus taking the leaves of a plant into his mouth and chewing them to produce a liquid. The ape then applied the chewed leaves directly to his injury, as reported by the researchers in their study.

The plant is believed to be Fibraurea tinctoria, commonly known as Akar Kuning. It is considered a medicinal plant in traditional medicine, known for its pain-relieving, antibacterial, and anti-inflammatory properties. According to the researchers, it is used for various ailments such as dysentery, diabetes, and malaria.

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Researchers Observed Healing Process

According to the scientists, Rakus’s wound showed no signs of infection and healed within about a week. This is a significant and unique observation, as noted by the study’s authors. “As far as we know, there is only one other report of active wound treatment in non-human animals, specifically in chimpanzees.”¹

Previous research documented that some great ape species in the forests sought out medications to heal themselves. However, researchers had never observed whether or how the animals treated themselves. “This is the first time we have observed a wild animal applying a very effective medicinal plant directly to a wound,” says co-author Isabelle Laumer, a biologist at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in Konstanz.²

This article is a machine translation of the original German version of PETBOOK and has been reviewed for accuracy and quality by a native speaker. For feedback, please contact us at info@petbook.de.

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