This article is provided as a public service by the Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska Fairbanks, in cooperation with the UAF research community. Carla Helfferich is a science writer at the Institute. When the annual American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting convened in Chicago this February, among the sessions was the first-ever symposium on zoopharmocognosy. To anyone who's watched a cat eat grass to help upchuck a hairball, there's nothing extraordinary in the thought of animals taking natural medicines to make themselves healthy.
Primates are the champion drug finders.
In Tanzania's Gombe National Park, anthropologist Richard Wrangham watched several chimps leave their group at dawn. While most of the chimps breakfasted on fruits growing near by, the wanderers hunted for 20 minutes to find a particular plant. They proceeded to pick its leaves and swallow them whole, wrinkling their noses as they did. Wrangham sent leaf samples off for chemical analysis, and found that the chimps had good reason to tolerate the plant's terrible taste. The leaves contain a reddish oily substance that is deadly to fungus and many parasites, especially the little worm-like nematodes that particularly afflict chimpanzees.