Do Animals Self-Medicate?

People usually assume that animals are “passive” beings who know nothing and don’t have cognitive processes like we do. Personally, I feel it’s very boastful to assume that. Any pet proprietor or anybody who spends time round animals is aware of that animals have personalities and feelings identical to us, and that their conduct is normally “thought by.”

Zoopharmacognosy

In the Eighties, a brand new department of science was born, devoted to “zoopharmacognosy,” that means “animals’ information of drugs.” In the phrases of the wildlife researcher Michael Huffman, it stands for “what an animal does to keep up homeostasis and the way to not really feel dangerous.”

The self-discipline got here out of the scientists’ observations of animals medicating themselves. On a facet be aware, it’s fascinating to me how human beings have been conscious of such a animal conduct for millennia — and even studying about sure vegetation by watching animals self-medicate — however the buzzword, the “scientific” time period for it appeared solely when credentialed western consultants mentioned so. A humorous world!

Animals Treat Themselves Against Parasites

Surprise! Many animals rid themselves of parasites through the use of substances and vegetation with tough surfaces to wash and “detox” — and by looking for out and consuming medicinal herbs.

For instance, large humpback whales have been not too long ago caught on digicam rolling round on sandy seabeds, “to shed parasites that reside on their pores and skin, often called ectoparasites, which might make the whales much less hydrodynamic.” A variety of primates appear to hunt out medicinal vegetation to battle pathogens and remove parasites.

Fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster) choose vegetation with excessive ethanol content material for laying eggs when within the presence of endoparasoid wasps — whose “infants” feed on fruit fly “infants” however die from consuming an excessive amount of ethanol. When detecting endoparasitoid wasps, fruit flies lay their eggs in leaves with excessive ethanol content material as a method of safety for his or her offspring.¹

These wasps, particularly these of the Leptopilina genus, inject their eggs in roughly 80% of fruit fly larvae.² As the wasp eggs develop, they devour the larvae. As the wasps are consuming extra of the larvae, additionally they devour extra ethanol, which kills the wasps. This kind of conduct is known as “transgenerational prophylaxis.”³

Adult monarch butterflies want to lay their eggs on poisonous vegetation reminiscent of milkweed, which reduces parasite progress of their offspring caterpillars. Pigs like to wallow within the mud, and one of many causes they do it’s to do away with exterior parasites.

Woolly bear caterpillars (Grammia incorrupta) are generally lethally contaminated by tachinid flies. If contaminated, they ingest plant toxins known as pyrrolizidine alkaloids, which confers resistance in opposition to the flies. Notably, parasitized caterpillars are extra possible than non-parasitized caterpillars to particularly ingest giant quantities of pyrrolizidine alkaloids, and extreme ingestion of those toxins reduces the survival of non-parasitized caterpillars.⁴

Sparrows have been observed to combine cigarette butts into their nests. Researchers consider that it’s not a random alternative of nesting materials, and that the sparrows have one way or the other discovered that nicotine residue impedes parasitic mites. The tobacco hornworm ingests nicotine which reduces colony progress and toxicity of Bacillus thuringiensis, resulting in elevated survival of the hornworm.⁵

Ants contaminated with Beauveria bassiana, a fungus, selectively devour dangerous substances (reactive oxygen species, ROS) upon publicity to a fungal pathogen, but keep away from these within the absence of an infection.^6,7

According to a 2022 paper printed in European Journal of Wildlife Research, throughout chilly and wet seasons, the crested porcupines (Hystrix cristata) in Central Italy usually turn out to be contaminated by completely different species of ectoparasites and endoparasites. During this time porcupines actively hunt down a reasonably giant number of medicinal vegetation, principally with antiparasitic properties. Those vegetation seem like relieving the signs of the infections, for instance, irritation.⁸

More than 200 species of track birds “wipe” themselves with ants, a conduct often called “anting.” Birds both grasp ants of their beaks and wipe them alongside the backbone of every feather all the way down to the bottom, or generally roll in ant hills so the ants crawl by their feathers. Birds mostly use ants that spray formic acid. In lab assessments, this acid is dangerous to feather lice. Its vapor alone can kill them.^9,10

Science Accepts the Fact That Animals Self-Medicate

Here is what the 2014 article titled, “Animals that self-medicate,” printed on the NIH web site, needed to say:

“A variety of animals self-prescribe the vegetation round them once they want a treatment.

In the Sixties, the Japanese anthropologist Toshisada Nishida noticed chimpanzees in Tanzania consuming aspella leaves, which had no dietary worth. Harvard primatologist Richard Wrangham noticed the identical conduct at Jane Goodall’s Gombe reserve, the place chimps have been swallowing leaves entire … In 1996, biologist Michael Huffman prompt the chimps have been self-medicating.

Huffman, an American who has labored for years in Japan on the Primate Research Institute at Kyoto University, first noticed a parasite-ridden, constipated chimpanzee in Tanzania chew on the leaves of a noxious plant it might usually keep away from. By the subsequent day, the chimpanzee was utterly recovered.”¹¹

Here is a captivating interview with Michael Huffman from final yr:

In 2001, Michael Huffman printed an article titled, “Self-Medicative Behavior within the African Great Apes: An Evolutionary Perspective into the Origins of Human Traditional Medicine.” In the paper, he appears to be like not simply on the ways in which some animals self-mediate but in addition at how in some instances, folks study medicinal properties of vegetation by observing what animals do to deal with themselves.

“Close to a century in the past a Tanzanian drugs man, Babu Kalunde, found an vital therapy that saved the lives of many individuals in his village, who have been struggling an epidemic of a dysentery-like sickness. He discovered in regards to the potential medicinal worth of a plant identified to the WaTongwe as mulengelele by observing a equally sick younger porcupine ingest the roots of the plant.

Before these opportune observations, Babu Kalunde and the folks of his village had averted this plant, which they knew to be extremely toxic. After telling the villagers his story of the porcupine, nevertheless — and taking small doses of the plant himself — he persuaded them to make use of the plant on the sick.

To at the present time, the WaTongwe use the roots of mulengelele as drugs. Babu’s grandson, Mohamedi Seifu Kalunde, now a revered elder and healer himself, makes use of this plant to additionally deal with gonorrhea and syphilis.

In conventional human societies, the distinction between meals and drugs could not at all times be clear. This thought is expressed in a Japanese saying, “ishoku dougen,” which immediately translated means “drugs and meals are of the identical origin.”

It is probably no coincidence, then, that conventional spices, condiments, and greens used world wide are additionally vital sources of antitumor brokers or possess antioxidant, antibacterial, antiviral, and antiparasitic qualities.¹²

The idea of meals as drugs goes a step additional. Etkin (1996)¹³ discovered that 30% of the plant species recognized as meals among the many agricultural Hausa of Nigeria have been additionally used as drugs. Furthermore, 89% of species used to deal with signs of malaria have been additionally utilized in a dietary context.”¹⁴

Animals Treat Other Animals, Too

The 2022 paper in Current Biology titled, “Application of bugs to wounds of self and others by chimpanzees within the wild,” talks about chimpanzees utilizing bugs to deal with their very own wounds in addition to the injuries of different chimpanzees.

“On a number of events, researchers noticed ‘completely different chimpanzees making use of or transferring an insect to not their very own wound, however to the wound of one other chimpanzee. (Video S1) …’ Given the unambiguous context during which the noticed behaviour occurred (injured people with open flesh wounds), we recommend that they could characterize one other case of medicative behaviour in non-human animals.”

Animals Use Insect Repellants, Digestive Aids, and More

North American brown bears (Ursus arctos) have been noticed to make a paste out of Osha (Ligusticum porteri) roots and saliva and rub it by their fur to repel bugs or soothe bites. The plant, regionally often called “bear root,” is thought immediately to include 105 lively compounds, reminiscent of coumarins that will repel bugs when topically utilized. There is a legend that the Navajo Indians discovered to make use of this root medicinally from the bear for treating abdomen aches and infections.^15,16,17,18

A variety of primates rub millipedes onto their fur and pores and skin. Millipedes include benzoquinones, compounds identified to be potently repellent to bugs.^19,20,21

A variety of animals, reminiscent of completely different birds, colobus monkeys, mountain gorillas and chimpanzees, tapirs, and forest elephants hunt down and eat clay, which absorbs intestinal micro organism and their toxins and alleviates abdomen upset and diarrhea. Cattle eat clay-rich termite mound soil, which deactivates ingested pathogens or fruit toxins.

I wish to finish the story with Dr. Becker’s interview of Caroline Ingraham, who is named an professional in animal self-medication.

On a facet be aware, it’s humorous how the occasions have modified. Just a number of years in the past, the subject of permitting animals to “choose” medicines was kosher sufficient to be talked about on BBC (OMG)! Today, they don’t even need human sufferers to have a say in what goes into them! Forget the sufferers, they don’t even need licensed docs to “choose” what works! A sure “horse drugs” involves thoughts by affiliation, however I digress.

Here is a really fascinating interview with Caroline Ingraham during which she talks about her expertise of serving to home pets.

About the Author

To discover extra of Tessa Lena’s work, be sure you try her bio, Tessa Fights Robots.