Wounded orangutan seen using plant as medicine

[Biskit]

A bit of a wow! moment.

Wounded orangutan seen using plant as medicine

It is the first time a creature in the wild has been seen using a medicinal plant to treat a wound.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[Snicklefritz]

How little we know about the creatures we have so blithely dismissed.

 

[Danny McG]

Get the army in and shoot them all now! - we know what'll happen next.

 

[Montero]

Nah, just build a large library and they'll all be really busy.

 

[Provincial]

Honestly, looking at the video, I just couldn't see the dressing it was supposed to have applied to the wound. As evidence of unexpected behaviour it seems a little equivocal. The footage which was supposed to show the wound had healed could have been from before the injury was received.

 

[pogopossum]

It was reported by actual observers on US National Public Radio, including the gash, the treatment and the resultant healing. The ape was described as new to the area. It was thought that his mother had instructed him in the area where he used to live.

 

[Oligonicella]

Just watched and saw zero application of anything to the wound so unless vid comes out, it's just hearsay. "Say scientists" is a nothing-burger. You have the reporter's word. Jane Goodall made bogus observations too, so this isn't above validation.

There was a lowland female gorilla who had a lower right molar abscess that ate through her cheek. She healed naturally too. You don't survive evolution by submitting to every nasty setback.

 

[Robert Zwilling]

It's a real article, a real orangutan, real scientists, and the case as is very well documented.

The adult male orangutan Rakus was photographed with a facial wound on June 23, 2022 (left). Two days later he applied chewed leaves from an akar kuning plant to the wound. By the time he was photographed again on August 25, 2022 (right), the wound was barely visible.

"Rakus, a male orangutan now likely in his mid-30s, who was first seen in the Suaq Balimbing research area in 2009. In June 2022 researchers monitoring the 150 orangutans in the neighborhood noticed something unusual: Rakus was injured, with an open wound on his flange (a large, flat “cheek” structure that surrounds his face, characterizing him as a sexually mature male orangutan). And he seemed to be purposefully applying plant sap and crushed leaves to the wound—almost like a poultice—according to research describing the behavior, which was published on May 2 in Scientific Reports. " ---Scientific American, May 3, 2024.

It certainly doesn't help matters that it took almost 2 years for this to get published.

Maybe they didn't want to cause a disturbance.

However, another article under interesting reads could be even more problematic, "Do Insects Have an Inner Life? Animal Consciousness Needs a Rethink"