Chimpanzees are a primate with a high IQ found in Africa. The vast majority of primatologists currently conduct research in Uganda's Wild Chimpanzee Kiba National Park, which is home to about 1,500 wild chimpanzees.
Scientists have long observed chimpanzees to understand and study animal emotions and behaviors, and some scientists have found that chimpanzees may even master "Chinese herbalism" in addition to common learning behaviors.
Many scientists believe that in addition to normal feeding behavior, chimpanzees may have extremely complex emotions, curiosity, and learning behaviors.
A scientist has observed a female chimpanzee who initially performed dangerous "jiu-jitsu" on the branch where it was located.
It tried to grab a dried rattan. There was no fruit or leaves on the vine, and it seemed to have died many months earlier.
Eventually, it grabbed the rattan and easily pulled out the rattan with a diameter of more than ten centimeters. The vine was rotten, and the juvenile female chimpanzee took the vine she was clinging to to the ground and began to tear the dead vine.
Its enthusiastic focus piqued the curiosity of the other two chimpanzees, who stared nervously at it.
Suddenly, the female chimpanzee became nervous. It turned the rattan over and then hurried to bite its fibers.
There were so many fat larvae in this seemingly useless dried rattan that it enjoyed for five minutes.
In the days that followed, searching for larvae in dead rattan became a favorite thing these young chimpanzees do. Since then, the chimpanzee seems to have learned to look for larvae from the rattan, and in the months since, it will try its luck when it encounters the rattan.
Intentionally eat some deworming bark
Scientists discovered that when Kirimi, a 6-year-old female chimpanzee, left her mother to rip off the bark of a large bracted acacia tree in Ba Cai National Park, scientists later discovered that this behavior was intentional because the tree has important insecticidal abilities.
Although Harvard anthropologist Richard Langham has been tracking a chimpanzee population of more than fifty individuals in Kanjawala with more than two decades of work with more than two dozen Ugandan aides, recording their daily behavior, they have never observed chimpanzees eating the bark of the tree. The only plausible explanation is that chimpanzees have learned behaviors to find that eating this bark is free from parasites.
Intentional use of acacia trees for the treatment of diarrhea
Currently, the world's most famous chimpanzee research team is Richard Langham's team, whose research focuses on the availability of chimpanzee food, its ecological significance, its impact on subgroup stability, and they even focus on calories contained in food.
If scientists want to prove that chimpanzees do have autonomous medical behavior, the focus of research is very different, and scientists must find that the diet of an individual chimpanzee is indeed different from that of its peers.
The team systematically collects chimpanzees' droppings and tests them for parasites.
Analysis of urine can tell scientists which chimpanzees are most likely to bring us some valuable information.
Soon, scientists discovered something very interesting.
In fact, three days before they observed Kirimi eating the bark of the acacia tree, the observation team found that the chimpanzee had alternating diarrhea and hard stools related to parasites, that is, worms; It also has more parasites in its body than other females in the chimpanzee colony.
On the fourth day, they observed the female chimpanzee eating the bark of the acacia tree.
To the surprise of the scientists, when they learned that the bark would be used by local doctors in the Congo Basin to deworm the forest's inhabitants and their livestock.
When Uganda was also used to treat bloating, scientists concluded that chimpanzees deliberately used these barks for treatment.
After two days of eating the bark, the chimpanzee kirimi's feces became normal hard lumps, and the number of parasite eggs in the feces dropped from 300 per gram to 0.
Therefore, scientists use the following substances as experimental subjects, including parasitic protozoa, insects, bacteria, fungal strains, viruses (such as HIV) and cancer cells, to test the biological activity of this bark for these microorganisms and parasites.
They also tested the biological properties of more than forty other plants we collected from Kiba Cuisine National Park in the same way.
One of the goals of these studies is to find new ingredients that can be used for medicinal purposes in the future to defeat some of the pathogens of human diseases.
If chimpanzees can choose medicinal plants that are effective for them, we also hope to use this information to help humans fight disease, because we have a very close relationship with chimpanzees.
Recent developments in related research
During the study and observation of chimpanzee Kirimi, scientists discovered the medicinal effects of the plant acacia bark, learned about the use of these plants by local doctors, and then extracted a new ingredient from it - saponin.
This substance can stop the growth of tumor cells.
These current scientists' research is now being advanced at the French National Museum of Nature and collaborates with the Institute of Natural Substance Chemistry (ICSN), kampala University, and uganda's association responsible for wildlife conservation.
So far, they have extracted more than three hundred plant extracts from samples collected in Kanjawara. The extract of this plant will bring great help to humans in the future.
Jane Goodall, an authority on chimpanzees, has also reported that sick chimpanzees eat bananas with antibiotics added to them, but when the symptoms are gone, do they discard them?
Because a therapeutic molecule is usually toxic if it is ingested in large quantities.
Chimpanzees in kiba cuisine are usually in good health. Scientists did some analysis of the feces of clearly identifiable chimpanzee individuals and proved that even though all stool samples contained parasites, the number of parasites was very small.
According to a study by Alain Flemish and Georges Cobert, researchers at the French National Museum of Natural History, on humans who inhabit the forest, chimpanzees have far fewer parasites than humans.
There is very little information about wild chimpanzees, and neither through urinalysis nor through animal observation has found that they have serious diseases. And, usually, minor illnesses also heal quickly.
All of these observations have led scientists to speculate that certain foods eaten by chimpanzees may be biologically active against bacterial pathogens, parasites, etc., and that when these foods are consumed regularly, the health of chimpanzees is also affected.
Such food, biological activity is a little weaker, less toxic, it is likely that health food has a preventive effect, but also helps chimpanzees maintain good health, reduce the number of parasites in their bodies.
Use with plant therapy
A quarter of the more than fifty chimpanzees in Kanjawala were injured by traps set by poachers.
After being deeply strangled into the flesh and bound by wire or string for several weeks, the toe bones, fingers, forearms, and some parts of the limbs will die and fall off, and then they can be healed.
Needless to say, plants with antibacterial and even anti-inflammatory properties can certainly help chimpanzees survive these injuries, and scientists believe that chimpanzees will actively use these foods to heal their injuries.
The chimpanzees of Kanjawala may be so healthy in large part because of their varied diets and because the natural environment in which they live is protected.
They can also easily find biologically active plants, and they can eliminate diseases and injuries through these medicinal plants.
How did chimpanzees learn to take advantage of these medicinal plants? In what tradition this "science" of theirs has been passed down? This is the main problem that plagues scientists. With the deepening of future research, can we also follow the route of chimpanzee "Chinese herbalism" to find many plants that humans do not understand, and then use these plants in the medical field?