When a wild orangutan in Indonesia suffered a painful wound to his cheek, he did something that stunned researchers: He chewed plant leaves known to have pain-relieving and healing properties, rubbed the juice on the open wound — and then used the leaves as a poultice to cover his injury.
"This case represents the first known case of active wound treatment in a wild animal with a medical plant," biologist Isabelle Laumer, the first author of a paper about the revelation, told NPR.
She says she was "very excited" about the orangutan's seeming innovation, which was documented at the Suaq Balimbing research site in the Gunung Leuser National Park in northwest Suinfmatra, where sme 1o50 orangutans live in a protected raorest.
https://www.npr.org/2024/05/03/1248879197/orangutan-wound-medicinal-plant-treatment#:~:text=The%20orangutan%20is,Max%20Planck%20Institute Animal Behavior in Germany and Universitas Nasional in Indonesia.
Rakus was spotted with the new wound on June 22, 2022. Three days later, he started eating the stem and leaves of a liana — a vine that researchers say the orangutan population in Suaq rarely eats. From there, his behavior grew increasingly intentional and specific.
Rakus spent 13 minutes eating the plant, and then he spent seven minutes chewing the leaves and not swallowing, instead daubing the plant's juices onto his wound. When flies began landing on his wound, Rakus fully covered it with leaf material and went back to eating the plant.
Within five days, the wound had closed. And by July 19 — around a month after the injury was likely sustained — "the wound appeared to have fully healed and only a faint scar remained," the biologists said in their paper, published Thursday in Scientific Reports.
If Rakus was acting as his own nurse, he also seems to have been a good patient: the day after he initially applied the leaves, the orangutan found the plant once again and ate more leaves. He also rested much more than usual, which researchers say likely gave his body a better chance to heal.
Saidi Agam/Suaq Project
Its common name is Akar Kuning (Fibraurea tinctoria). It's a type of liana — a vine that climbs into tree canopies to reach sunshine. The plant has analgesic, antipyretic and diuretic effects; in traditional medicine in the region, it's used to treat diseases from dysentery and diabetes to malaria.
Analysis of the plant's chemical compounds has found "the presence of furanoditerpenoids and protoberberine alkaloids, which are known to have antibacterial, anti-inflammatory, anti-fungal, antioxidant, and other biological activities of relevance to wound healing," according to the researchers' paper.
"It also contains jatrorrhizine (antidiabetic, antimicrobial, antiprotozoal, anticancer, and hypolipidemic properties... and palmatine (anticancer, antioxidation, anti-inflammatory, antibacterial, antiviral properties," the paper said.
So, what does the plant taste like? We asked Laumer if she herself has ever tried it.
"No I have not," she said. "It's rarely eaten by the orangutans at Suaq (in only 0.3% of all ca. 390,000 feeding scans)."
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