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Hold my ointment: Wild orangutan observed healing wound with medicinal plant

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JAKARTA — Self-medicating in animals has been reported before, but scientists noted something particularly special when they observed a wild orangutan in Sumatra treating a wound on its face with a plant known to have healing properties. It was June 22, 2022, when the research team in the Suaq Balimbing area of Indonesia’s Gunung Leuser National Park first noticed that the male Sumatran orangutan (Pongo abelii), which they named Rakus, had a fresh wound under his right eye and inside his mouth while vocalizing a long call. Three days later, the team observed Rakus start to selectively chew on the stem and leaves of the Fibraurea tinctoria liana, and then repeatedly apply the subsequent sap precisely onto the facial wound for several minutes. The orangutan eventually covered the wound with the chewed leaves, and by June 30, the wound was already closed and showed no sign of infection, the researchers reported in their recently published study in the journal Scientific Reports. “This observation is the first time that a wild animal was observed actively treating his wound with a healing plant. So, that’s a very important finding,” study lead author Isabelle B. Laumer, a cognitive and evolutionary biologist at Germany’s Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior, told Mongabay in an email interview. The male Sumatran orangutan, named Rakus by researchers, with a fresh facial wound in June 2022. Image courtesy of Armas Fitra/Suaq Balimbing Research. Research has shown that some animals, especially primates and apes, engage in self-medicating behavior. However,…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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