1. lifelines
  2. Why chimps eat seemingly strange food

Why chimps eat seemingly strange food

By dr. dolittle on December 8, 2011.

i-6e9f870bdde73f07de8857d9551b8524-chimpanzee-picture-thumb-350x252-71171.jpg
Image Credit: Animal Planet

Researchers have discovered that the reason chimpanzees eat certain foods may have nothing to do with having a sophisticated palate, but rather, the animals appear to be self-medicating. I suppose if you were a chimpanzee it would be difficult to find a doctor to treat your most recent parasitic infection. The ability to know what foods to eat for specific medicinal benefits may be a learned behavior.

Other animals are known to self-medicate as well, but chimpanzees and humans are the most notorious. Personally, I like to self-medicate with chocolate...and coffee...

For a list of many of the plants chimpanzees in the study were observed ingesting, including their medicinal benefit, visit Discovery News. It is not recommended that you attempt to self-medicate with any of these plants since some are toxic. We have a lot to learn from our closest relatives.


Source:
Discovery News

Tags
Life Science

More like this

The Dawn of Medicine, Plus or Minus a Couple Million Years
I was puzzled by an article in today's New York Times called "Researchers rewrite first chapter for the history of medicine." William Honan, the reporter, announced that "an art historian and a medical researcher say they have pushed back by hundreds of years the earliest use of a medicinal plant…
Meat Eating in Human Prehistory
All human hunter-gatherer groups that have been studied incorporate meat in their diets. Studies have shown that the total dietary contribution of meat varies a great deal, and seems to increase with latitude so that foragers in subarctic and arctic regions eat a lot of meat while those living near…
Animal Rights and Human Needs: Foundations of the debate (Part II)
Continued from Part 1 ... Animal rights are arbitrarily granted or assumed If human rights are arbitrarily assigned, so are animal rights. The argument has been made that animals with certain properties ... sentience (the definition of which moves somewhat), phylogenetic closeness to humans, or…
Are Pigs Really Like People?
We hear this all the time. Pig physiology is like people physiology. Pigs and humans have the same immune system, same digestive system, get the same diseases. Pigs are smart like people are smart. Pigs are smarter than dogs. And so on. Ask a faunal expert in archaeology or a human…

Ficus natalensis bark (anti-diarrheal)- It's good to know these chips are keeping the jungle clean from diarrhea. What do they take if they are constipated out there?

Chimps are quite smart..they very well know what to eat !
I have personally observed them.

By gabion manufacturers (not verified) on 07 Dec 2012 #permalink