Self-medicating gorillas may hold clues to new drugs
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Great apes are known to self-medicate by selecting plants with healing properties.
A wounded orangutan recently made headlines for using a plant paste to heal an injury.
In the latest study, botanists recorded the plants eaten by western lowland gorillas in Gabon’s Moukalaba-Doudou National Park.
They selected four trees that were likely to be beneficial, based on interviews with local healers: the fromager tree (Ceiba pentandra), giant yellow mulberry (Myrianthus arboreus), African teak (Milicia excelsa) and fig trees (Ficus).
The bark of the trees – used in traditional medicine to treat everything from stomach complaints to infertility – contained chemicals with medicinal effects, from phenols to flavonoids.
