Chimpanzees Seem to Use Bugs to Deal with Their Wounds | Sensible Information

Over a 15-month period, scientists cataloged 76 cases of chimpanzees using insects on their wounds and the wounds of others.
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When humans are injured, we usually reach for a bandage, but chimpanzees don’t have that luxury. Instead, the great apes appear to have invented their own first-aid system: applying insects to open wounds.

While some bears, elephants, insects and lemurs are known to use plants to self-medicate against parasites and diseases, this is one of the first recorded cases of animals using other animal substances – smoothed insects – as a form of medicine, Ashley Strickland reports for CNN. Because the chimpanzees also sometimes use bugs to treat their friends’ wounds, the behavior could be a sign of altruism in species, according to the study published Monday in Current Biology.

“When you go to school and read about the amazing things animals can do in your biology books,” study author Simone Pika, a biologist at the University of Osnabrück in Germany, told Agence France-Presse. “I think it really could be something like that that’s going to end up in these books.”

In a community of about 45 chimpanzees in Gabon’s Loango National Park, scientists led by Pika and University of Osnabrück primatologist Tobias Deschner observed several cases of chimpanzees capturing winged insects and using them on themselves and others. The observation was made as part of the Ozouga chimpanzee project, which aims to better understand chimpanzee cognitive abilities and social relationships.

“For example, our two closest living relatives, chimpanzees and bonobos, swallow leaves of plants with anthelmintic (antiparasitic) properties and chew bitter leaves, which have chemical properties to kill intestinal parasites,” Pika says in a statement. “Chimpanzees eat insects, but we didn’t know that they catch them and use them to treat their wounds.

The novel discovery was made in 2019 by Alessandra Mascaro, who was a volunteer on the project at the time, reports New Scientist’s Chen Ly. Mascaro watched as a chimpanzee named Suzee tended to her adolescent son Sia, who had an injured foot.

“I noticed that she seemed to have something between her lips which she then applied to the wound on Sia’s foot,” Mascaro said in a statement. “Later that evening I watched my videos again and saw that Suzee had first reached out to catch something, which she placed between her lips and then directly onto the open wound on Sia’s foot.”

When Lara Southern, a primatology PhD student at the University of Osnabrück, witnessed similar behavior from an adult male chimpanzee named Freddy the following week, the team hypothesized that the chimpanzees were capturing tiny flying insects from the air. Over the next year, researchers closely observed and filmed chimpanzees showing signs of injury.

A year after Mascaro first saw Suzee applying crushed bugs to her son’s foot, Southern noticed other adult chimpanzees tending to each other’s wounds.

“An adult male, Littlegrey, had a deep open wound on his shin and Carol, an adult female who had been caring for him, suddenly reached out to catch an insect,” Southern says in a statement. “What impressed me the most was that she gave it to Littlegrey, he put it on his wound, and then Carol and two other adult chimpanzees also touched the wound and moved the insect over it.”

Over a 15-month period, the research team recorded 76 cases of chimpanzees using insects in their injuries. The study’s authors suspect the dark, flying insects may have anti-inflammatory or antiseptic properties, reports Natalia Mesa for The Scientist. Even if the insects don’t bring any medical benefit, the behavior can be an important part of the chimpanzee’s local social culture.

What particularly surprised Pika was that chimpanzees offered help to people they weren’t genetically related to.

“This is particularly stunning to me because so many people question the prosocial abilities of other animals,” Pika said. “Suddenly we have a species where we really see how individuals care about others.”

Next, the researchers want to recover any remaining insects that the chimpanzees use to identify the species and its potential pharmaceutical properties.

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