The Orangutan is the first wild animal to use a plant for healing
The ancestor of the orangutan Rakus: Evidence for self-medical treatment of wounds in a national park
According to the paper, Rakus’ innovative behavior suggests that medical wound treatment may have arisen from a common ancestor shared by humans and orangutans.
“It shows that orangutans and humans share knowledge. The study showed that they live in the same habitat, and a primatologist at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in Konstanz says that is intriguing.
The orangutan Rakus is said to have been born in the late 1980s and was seen applying leaves to his wound when he was 32 years old. He was first seen in March of 2009.
In 2021, Rakus underwent a growth spurt and became a mature flanged male. The researchers observed Rakus fighting with other flanged males to establish dominance and, in June 2022, a field assistant noted an open wound on his face, possibly made by the canines of another male, Schuppli says.
Rakus was observed eating the leaves and stems of the creeping from the local people who use it to treat a variety of conditions. Orangutans in the area rarely eat this plant.
Rakus ate the plant for 13 minutes and after chewing and not swallowing he poured the plant’s juices onto his wound. Rakus covered his wound with leaves, then went back to eating the plant.
The research group has seen no other orangutans in the national park self-medicate using akar kuning in 21 years of observation. This could be because wild orangutans in the region are rarely injured. Or perhaps Rakus is the only one who knows of this treatment, which could be a behaviour he picked up before he moved into the area.
Huffman says self-medication is seen in many species. Canadian snow geese swallow the leaves and excrete tape worms. Dusky-footed wood rats (Neotoma fuscipes) line their nests with aromatic plants to fumigate parasites3. And chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) in Gabon have been observed rubbing insects near their wounds2, potentially as treatment.
He believes that humans might have discovered remedies by watching animals. Our ancestors are said to have been looking at other animals and learning about medicines. Social animals communicate information that can last a long time.
A female orangutan applied medicinal plant to heal its own injury in northern Sumatra: A biologist’s note on a hunter in the wild
She says she was “very excited” about the orangutan’s seeming innovation, which was documented at the Suaq Balimbing research site in the Gunung Leuser National Park in northwest Sumatra, where some 150 orangutans live in a protected rainforest.
The orangutan is named Rakus. Laumer may have accidentally picked up a large wound in a fight. A few days after, he was using a plant to treat his injury. The wound then healed, seemingly without any infection.
Laumer and another researcher, Caroline Schuppli, led a team of cognitive and evolutionary biologists from the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in Germany and Universitas Nasional in Indonesia.
Within five days, the wound had closed. And by July 19 — around a month after the injury was likely sustained — “the wound appeared to have fully healed and only a faint scar remained,” the biologists said in their paper, published Thursday in Scientific Reports.
Source: Orangutan in the wild applied medicinal plant to heal its own injury, biologists say
Orangutan Akar Kuning: a common name of a plant with medicinal and functional effects on wound healing in humans and apes
Akar Kuning is its common name. A type of vine that climbs into canopies to get sunshine is called a liana. The plant has analgesic, antipyretic and diuretic effects; in traditional medicine in the region, it’s used to treat diseases from dysentery and diabetes to malaria.
Analysis of the plant’s chemical compounds has found “the presence of furanoditerpenoids and protoberberine alkaloids, which are known to have antibacterial, anti-inflammatory, anti-fungal, antioxidant, and other biological activities of relevance to wound healing,” according to the researchers’ paper.
The paper said that it had jatrorrhizine, and palmatine, with anti-cancer and hypolipidemic properties.
Orangutan males move between their home ranges after puberty or establish a new one in another area, according to Schuppli’s findings.
Rakus may share his medical knowledge with other orangutans. That gets into the social question of culture. In the past, orangutans in Sumatra have shown a skill for sharing innovative ideas, with popular behaviors spreading until they reach a natural boundary, like a river.
Schuppli said that the treatment of wounds in humans was mentioned in a manuscript dating back to 2200 BC and included cleaning, plaster, and bandaging.
Noting that taking action to treat a wound is seen in humans as well as in African and Asian great apes, she added, “it is possible that there exists a common underlying mechanism for the recognition and application of substances with medical or functional properties to wounds and that our last common ancestor already showed similar forms of ointment behavior.”
A new study claims that a common ancestor shared by orangutans and humans could be behind the self-medical treatment of wounds in orangutan Rakus. The study found that Rakus self-medicated his wound with a plant called ‘Akar kuning’. It said Rakus ate the plant for 13 minutes and after chewing and not swallowing he poured its juices onto his wound.