A wild orangutan used a medicinal plant to treat himself, scientists say

An orangutan in Indonesia appeared to treat a wound with medicine from a tropical plant — the latest example of how some animals attempt to soothe their ills with remedies found in the wild, scientists reported Thursday.

Scientists observed an orangutan named Rakus, thought to be around 35 years old, pluck and chew up leaves of a medicinal plant used by people throughout Southeast Asia to treat pain and inflammation. He then used his fingers to apply the plant juices to an injury on the right cheek. Afterward, he pressed the chewed plant to cover the open wound like a makeshift bandage, said a new study in Scientific Reports.

Previous research has documented several species of great apes foraging for medicines in forests to heal themselves, but scientists hadn’t yet seen an animal treat itself in this way. “This is the first time that we have observed a wild animal applying a quite potent medicinal plant directly to a wound, ”said co-author Isabelle Laumer, a biologist at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in Konstanz, Germany.

The orangutan’s behavior was recorded in 2022 by Ulil Azhari, a co-author and field researcher at the Suaq Project in Medan, Indonesia. Photographs show the animal’s wound closed within a month without any problems.

Scientists have been observing orangutans in Indonesia’s Gunung Leuser National Park since 1994, but they hadn’t previously seen this behavior.

“It’s a single observation ,” said Emory University biologist Jacobus de Roode, who was not involved in the study. “But often we learn about new behaviors by starting with a single observation.”