Ape recorded practicing medicinal healing in Indonesia park

For the first time ever, a wild ape has been recorded using a medicinal plant to treat a wound. The incident is compelling proof that, as with tools, humans aren’t the only species that use medicines to treat injuries or illnesses.

The incident happened two years ago in Gunung Leuser National Park, Indonesia. There, scientists report witnessing an orangutan treat a nasty wound on his face by chewing the leaves of a medicinal plant, applying the juice to the wound, and then patching the wound by using the leaves as a poultice.

German and Indonesian wildlife researchers reported the discovery in the journal Scientific Reports.

They named the self-healing orangutan Rukus. The team researches the dynamics and behavior of about 100 orangutans inhabiting Gunung Leuser National Park in Sumatra.

As the retell, the team discovered Rukus with a nasty gash on his right cheek just beneath the eye. They presume Rukus incurred the injury in a fight with another male orangutan.

While monitoring Rukus’ behavior, the researchers said they witnessed him chewing the leaves of the plant species Fibraurea tinctoria described as “a climbing plant used in traditional medicine to treat wounds and conditions such as dysentery, diabetes, and malaria.” Rukus then applied a mixture of the plant’s juices and his saliva to the wound.

“Rakus chewed Akar Kuning stem and leaves and repeatedly applied the liquid this generated onto a wound on his right cheek for seven minutes, which he had sustained three days prior,” the researchers, led by Isabelle Laumer of the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior.

“Rakus then smeared the chewed leaves onto the wound until it was fully covered and continued feeding on the plant for over 30 minutes,” the authors added. They said the wound closed in about a week and fully healed in a month, the medicine seemingly helping to stave off infection.

Because of the deliberate choice of plant and Rukus’ focus on applying the plant only to his wound, the researchers concluded that the male orangutan intended to use this plant as medicine for healing and pain relief. They said the orangutans in Gunung Leuser National Park rarely touch the specific plant Rukus used to heal his injury, though humans have known for some time that it boasts healing attributes.

They said they didn’t know if this was the first time Rukus practiced this behavior, and they had not seen other orangutans using medicinal plants to treat injuries or illnesses. This could simply be due to the difficulty of studying a relatively small population of orangutans living in a dense forest spread over a very large area.

“As it appears that Rakus did intentionally treat his wound, this suggests that the behavior could have arisen in a common ancestor shared by humans and great apes,” Laumer et al. concluded.

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