Animal Pharm: What Can We Learn From Nature's Self-Medicators? Liz Langley - National Geographic
go to original October 15, 2013

Monkey Medicine at Living Links in Edinburgh Zoo (LivingLinksCentre)

Birds do it. Bees do it. Butterflies and chimpanzees do it.

These animals and many others self-medicate, using plants and other surprising materials to improve not only their own health but also the health of their offspring.

The video of capuchin monkeys at the Edinburgh Zoo (above) shows them rubbing onions and limes on their skin and into their fur as an antiseptic and insect repellent. Biologists have noticed that parasite-infected female monarch butterflies are more likely to lay their eggs on anti-parasitic milkweed, giving their offspring instant medication, while uninfected females show no preference. And urban birds who incorporate cigarette butts into their nests may be doing so because chemical properties in the smoked cigarettes may repel parasites, according to a 2012 study.

While cigarette-butt wallpaper may not appeal to most of us, other ways that animals self-medicate might be worth watching. Mark Hunter, a University of Michigan ecologist who was involved in the monarch research, says there is plenty to be learned from observing the way animals use the entire outdoors like one big drugstore. It’s something our own species probably once did—and might do well to revisit with modern pharmaceutical engineering and computer modeling techniques.

“It’s not the only way, but it seems to me that a sensible way [to aid in human drug development] would be to watch what animals do in nature to see how they exploit the natural products, the pharmaceuticals that are available to them in the environment, and try to learn from them,” he says.

Read the rest at National Geographic

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