Experts learn about chimpanzee “first aid”
Chimpanzees are one of the closest animals in animal species to human beings. And as a result, scientists are curious to study the lives of chimpanzees. Scientists have known for a long period of time that chimpanzees sometimes use leaves or insects as medicine. Now, researchers studying chimpanzees in Uganda have discovered that the animals will sometimes provide “first aid” to each other. This shows that chimpanzees may be able to think about how to help others, as well as themselves.
In 2021, A researcher called Dr. Elodie Freymann went to Uganda to study these chimpanzees. She has already studied how Chimpanzees use leaves to eat and also for medicine. She was interested in how they use leaves to heal themselves from wounds.
The researchers found 34 examples of chimpanzees treating their own wounds. And the “first aid” was very basic, like licking a wound or cleaning themselves with leaves. In some cases, Dr. Freymann says, the chimpanzees “chew the plants up, and then apply the chewed material to the open injury.” Licking a wound can help remove dirt and other small items that might make it hard for the wound to heal. What’s more, the spit of some chimps can have chemicals that can help keep a wound from getting infected. The leaves of some plants can do this, too.
As Dr. Freymann was looking through notes from other researchers, she noticed that there were several stories about chimpanzees caring for themselves or others. She and her team decided to look through 30 years of notes from researchers who had studied chimpanzees in the region. Also spent eight months studying two separate groups of chimpanzees in the forest.
Self-care was a very interesting thing for the researchers. What they found more interesting was the fact that a chimpanzee can tell when another chimpanzee was hurt, helping heal their wounds. In one example, a male, around teenage years, was helping another young male chimpanzee clean his wound.
Some of the chimps who helped others weren’t even related. In one case, a male chimp helped an unrelated female chimp escape from a rope trap that had caught her.
But there is one big question circling around every researcher’s head is how much of this behavior comes from the chimpanzees’ natural instincts, and how much is learned from other chimps? In one notable case, an adult female chewed a leaf to put on her wound. The chimp’s younger daughter saw this and then did exactly the same thing, chewing up a leaf and putting it on her mother’s injury.
Dr. Freymann believes that some behaviors come from instinct, but others seem so complicated that they’re probably learned. She plans to continue studying chimpanzees in order to learn more.