Wild chimpanzees captured with the help of a first aid forest

Chimpanzees in Uganda have been observed with the help of medicinal plants – in many ways – to treat open wounds and other injuries.

Scientists at the University of Oxford, working with a local Budongo Forest team, filmed and recorded animal incidents using first aid plants, both on themselves and from time to time on each other.

Their research is based on the discovery last year that chimpanzees seek and eat certain plants for self -medication.

Scientists have also made decades of scientific observations to create a catalog of the various ways in which chimpanzees use “upper first aid”.

Researchers say the study published in the magazine Boundaries in ecology and evolutionAdds to an increasing number of evidence that primates, including chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas, use natural medicines in a number of ways to remain healthy in nature.

Leading researcher Elodi Freumman explained that he has “a whole behavioral repertoire that chimpanzees use when sick or injured in the wild – to treat and maintain hygiene.”

“Some of them include the use of plants that you can find here,” she explained. “Chimpanzees throw them on their wounds or chew the plants up and then apply chewed material to the open injury.”

Researchers have studied footage from a very young, female chimpanzee for chewing plant materials and applied it to injury to their mother’s body.

They also found records of chimpanzees that refer to the wounds of other animals that were not connected. This is particularly exciting, explained Dr. Fraiman, “because he adds to the evidence that wild chimpanzees have the ability to empathize.”

Some of the hundreds of written observations that Dr. Fraimman and her colleagues have studied have come from a diary at the field station in the forest site, which is northwest of the capital, Campal.

This record of anecdotal evidence dates from the 1990s – local field officials, researchers and visitors wrote, describing every interesting behavior they have observed.

In this book, there are stories of injuries and chimpanzees, helping other chimpanzees to remove loops from their limbs.

There are some surprisingly human -like hygiene habits: a note describes chimpanzee using leaves to wipe away after defect.

This team of researchers had previously identified some of the plants that chimpanzees had sought and ate when they were injured. Scientists took samples from these plants, tested them and found that most had antibacterial properties.

Chimpanzees are not the only inhuman monkeys with an apparent knowledge of plant medicine. A recent study showed wild orangitite using chewed leaf material to heal face wound.

Scientists believe that studying this behavior of the wild monkey – and understanding more about the plants that chimpanzees use when they are sick or injured – can help search new drugs.

“The more we learn about the behavior and intelligence of Chimpanzee, the more I think we understand how little we, as humans, actually know about the natural world,” D -R Fraimman told BBC News.

“If I was tilted here in this forest without food and without medicine, I doubt that I could survive for a very long time, especially if I was injured or sick.”

“But chimpanzees are thriving here because they know how to gain access to the secrets of this place and how to find everything they need to survive from their environment.”