Chimps Know How To Take Their Medicine

Animals,like most humans resort to some form of medicine when feeling ill. Chimpanzees have been linked to eating of certain plants with relief of sickness.

Occasionally,chimpanzees eat a few leaves of Aspilia plants, which are rather like sunflowers, in the early morning. Unlike their usual mode of eating, they do not gulp them down but carefully massage the leaves in their mouth for about 15 seconds without chewing, then swallowing them whole.

The leaves contain thiarubrine-a, a potent drug used in tropical Africa to combat infection from fungi, bacteria and intestinal worms.By massaging the leaves,the chimps release the drug into the system via their mouth tissues.If they chewed and swallowed them as they do most leaves.the drug would probably be destroyed by stomach acids.Why they take the drug only first thing in the morning is stil not certainly known.

It could be that the concentration of thiarubrine is at its highest or stimulates waking up.Sick chimpanzees have been seen eating plants of vernonia and spiderwort families.They do it by sucking the bitter juice from vernonia shoots, as do Africans do with stomach disorders.The antibacterial plant helps boost the immune system.Cammelina,the spderwort plant eaten, grows in marshy places and is an antibiotic and anticoagulant.