Wild chimps have done first aid to each other for the first time in Budongo forest that humans have seen. The humans have learned that wild chimps are able to do first aid on other chimps who are in need of first aid. New research about chimps reveals the nature and prevalence of these rarely witnessed events.
This moment of a chimp giving another chimp first aid is really rare to see from human eyes. For example, thirty years of observations in Uganda’s Budongo Forest reveal that chimp-administered health care — both ape-to-ape care and self-care — happens frequently there after we heard observed them after the research came out, say primatologist Elodie Freymann of the University of Oxford and colleagues. It tells us that this is something not often to see in nature or anywhere else in the world.
There were even more colleagues who said this was a moment of apes treating other apes. Concern for other apes’ well-being “offers evidence that some of the foundations of human medicine — recognizing suffering, applying treatments and caring for others — are not uniquely human, but part of our deep evolutionary heritage,” says Christine Webb, a primatologist at Harvard University, who was not involved in the research. She says chimps can feel pain in other chimps and chimps would help each other if they are in need just like humans when humans are hurt.
From the 1990s through 2022, around 34 incidents of self-care have been recorded at Budongo forest, Freymann and colleagues reported on May 14 in Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution. Most of them were hygiene acts like wiping with leaves after bowel movements or mating. Licking wounds and dabbing them with leaves were the most observed acts of self-care and some saliva and plants contain antimicrobial compounds that might prevent infection, the researchers who study in chimps say.
In one surprising play, a male freed an unrelated female from a snare set for game, probably saving her life. Freyman says, it is great that chimps help free each other in different scenarios. They help each other even though a chimp is not related to the other, they still will save each other’s lives when help is needed.
Chimps also can do first aid to each other.
Source:
https://newsforkids.net/articles/2025/06/04/chimps-perform-first-aid-on-each-other/