For the Indigenous Vungu people living along the border of Gabon’s Moukalaba-Doudou National Park, the forest here has long been a source of traditional medicines. So when researchers set out to determine the bioactive properties of plants consumed by the park’s western lowland gorillas (Gorilla gorilla gorilla), and which the Vungu also use for medicine, the community’s knowledge proved vital to their findings. Leresche Oyaba Yinda, lead author of the resulting study published in PLOS ONE, says interviewing the local people, traditional healers and herbalists about the medicinal uses of plants eaten by gorillas “was a decisive step in the effectiveness of our study.” “Indeed, these ethnobotanical and ethnopharmacological surveys carried out among the [Indigenous people] of Moukalaba-Doudou National Park were like a compass pointing us in the direction of our questioning,” says Yinda, a scientist from the bacteriology lab at the Interdisciplinary Medical Research Center of Franceville in Gabon. A growing body of research has established that nonhuman animals use plants, as well as animal or soil substances, to treat wounds or other health conditions. It’s also been found that some of the plants that animals consume for self-medication are also used medicinally by humans. In the current study, a team of 13 researchers aimed to determine the medical properties of plants consumed by gorillas that are also part of the Vungu people’s traditional pharmacopeia. Lowland gorilla in Gabon. Western lowland gorillas eat a wide variety of plants, including species used medicinally by local people. Image by Rhett A.…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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