Chimpanzees are our closest living relatives. That said, our species split ~7 million years ago; so many differences between us have evolved in the intervening millennia. However, new discoveries are revealing chimps might be a lot more "human" than we once thought. They've been seen making spears, living in caves and much more. Now researchers have even discovered that wild chimps use "medicine" to treat disease.
A team of primatologists have been studying a group of bonobos in the Democratic Republic of Congo for years. They watched this group for hours a day; documenting everything you could think of. They even analysed their feces. And over the years a rather strange pattern began to emerge.
During the rainy season a chimp would, very occasionally, eat a little bit of the Manniophyton plant (on around 6% of days). They'd either strip a small portion of the bark, or sometimes fold up a few leaves and swallow them whole. What makes this all so peculiar is that this method of eating the plant basically means they'll receive no nutritional benefit from it. The fact they eat it so sporadically and only during a specific period is also odd; since Manniophyton is widely available year round.
The researchers believed they had found evidence these chimps use medicine. That these bonobos were consuming the Manniophyton plant in an effort to cure some condition; hence why it occurred so rarely and only during a specific period. The wet season is prime parasite time for chimps; so the "medicine" may have been an effort to cure that.
To be fair to the bonobos' intellect, this isn't the first time it's been determined that chimps use medicine. Research as far back as the dark ages of the 1990s had reached the same conclusion. However, the previous "medical" explanation has been that the rough texture of the leaves helped dislodge parasitic worms. What makes the consumption of Manniophyton special is that it seems to have a drug-based effect.
Yes, chimps aren't just doctors, they're pharmacists as well.
Many local human groups also use the Manniophyton as medicine; so it's actually been studied a little bit before. That research has revealed that it has relatively high quantities of many pharmacological compounds, giving the plant surprising antiinflammatory, antioxidant, antidiarrheal, and antibacterial benefits.
However, despite this range of benefits the researchers weren't able to figure out if it actually helped cure the chimps of anything. Although most of the bonobos only ate the plant for a few days (perhaps suggesting their condition got better) the researchers weren't able to find a correlation between a specific parasitic infection (and that infection being cured) and eating Manniophyton. Maybe the chimps were taking it for some other reason, or maybe their medicine just isn't that good.
After all, there is a reason we now take pills rather than just ramming whole leaves in our mouth.
Nevertheless, the evidence these chimps use medicine is still strong. It looks like one more "difference" between us and them has to be crossed off the list. You just watch, next they'll be starting wars. Oh wait (yes, that's a chimp conflict so bad it got a wikipedia page).
Reference
Fruth, B., Ikombe, N. B., Matshimba, G. K., Metzger, S., Muganza, D. M., Mundry, R., & Fowler, A. (2014). New evidence for self‐medication in bonobos: Manniophyton fulvum leaf‐and stemstrip‐swallowing from LuiKotale, Salonga National Park, DR Congo. American journal of primatology, 76(2), 146-158.
