Orangutan's Use of Medicinal Plant to Treat Wound Intrigues Scientists
Editor
3 May 2024 11:00 WIB
The wound never showed signs of infection and closed within five days, the researchers said.
"The observation suggests that the cognitive capacities that are needed for the behavior - active wound treatment with plants - may be as old as the last common ancestor of orangutans and humans," Schuppli said. "However, what these cognitive capacities exactly are remains to be investigated. Whereas this observation shows that orangutans are capable of treating their wounds with plants, we don't know to what extent they understand the process."
The last common ancestor of orangutans and humans lived about 13 million years ago.
Orangutans are one of the world's great apes - the closest living relatives of humans - alongside chimpanzees, bonobos, and gorillas. Orangutans are the least closely related to humans but still share approximately 97% of our DNA.
"It is possible that wound treatment with Fibraurea tinctoria emerges through accidental individual innovation. Individuals may accidentally touch their wounds while feeding on Fibraurea tinctoria and thus unintentionally apply the plant's juice to their wounds," Laumer said.
"But it may also be," Laumer added, "that Rakus has learned this behavior from other orangutans in his birth area."
This plant, widely distributed across China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, and other parts of Southeast Asia, is used in traditional medicine to treat conditions such as malaria.
Orangutan means "person of the forest" in the Indonesian and Malay languages, and these apes are the world's biggest arboreal mammals. Orangutans, adapted to living in trees, live more solitary lives than other great apes, sleeping and eating fruit in the forest canopy and swinging from branch to branch.
"Orangutans have high cognitive abilities, in particular in the area of physical cognition," Schuppli said. "They are known to be excellent problem-solvers. Wild orangutans acquire their skill sets via observational social learning, and skills get passed on from generation to generation. The population where this observation was made is known for its rich cultural repertoire, including tool use in different contexts."
REUTERS
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