Injured orangutan applied medicinal plant to wound

People may not be the only primates that tap plants' medicinal properties. In the first reported case of a wild animal actively applying a medically active plant to a wound, researchers observed a Sumatran orangutan named Rakus treating a facial injury with a poultice made from the juices and chewed leaves of the antibacterial, pain-relieving plant Fibraurea tinctoria , which is used in traditional medicine ( Sci. Rep. 2024, DOI: 10.1038/s41598-024-58988-7 ). Three days after researchers observed a facial injury on Rakus, they saw him feeding on the plant, says Isabelle B. Laumer , a primatologist at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior, who co-led the work. Researchers had observed the apes eating this plant in 0.3% of 390,000 feeding instances. After eating for about 13 min, Rakus began drawing the plant's juices from his mouth and administering them to his wound. Then he applied masticated plant matter directly