Chimpanzees as Pharmacists?

Lately, I have been reading this book called "Eating Well, Living Well: An Everyday Guide for Optimum Health" by Richard Beliveau, Ph.D and Denis Gingras, Ph.D which talks about nutrition from many different stand points. The chapter that I am currently reading is on the history of nutrtion. While reading, I came across something that really took me by surprise. See, usually I really don't like reading about history, probably because I can never relate it to my everyday life. But with nutrition I am really enjoying reading about how our history and our genes work together to explain how we care for our bodies.

So.....did you know that chimpanzees are like pharmacists? How so, you might ask.

Well, the book talks about how herbivores like apes are able to identify toxic plants using trichromatic vision, the ability to perceptions of the colours blue, red, and green. This was a gene mutation that happened in apes which was carried on to chimpanzees and humans. That's the reason we can see in colour. Having this trichromatic vision allowed apes to indentify which fruits were ripe and which foods were rotten which allowed them to avoid foods that would make them ill.

Just like apes, chimpanzees developed the trichromatice vision which allowed them to pick out healthy foods. After observations of chimps, we have found that chimps are also able to pick out plants that treat infections. One of the infections they treat are parasites. During the season when parasites are most prominate, African chimpanzees wil wrap hairy leaves of a plant around their tongues and swallow them whole. When scientists studied this technique, they found that the hairs of the plants contained small worms that would attack the parasite cells. Also, in Tanzania, chimpanzees with upset stomachs have been seen to chew on stems of small trees that they would normally avoid because of their bitterness. These small trees contain juices that contained several anti-parasitical compounds, which before seeing chimpanzees use them, had never been isolated by humans before. After 24 hours of dieting with these small tree stems, the chimpanzees would become active again and return to their regular eating patterns. Lastly, when chimpanzees get injured, they will change their diet to only eating the stems of the thorny plant Acanthus pubescens and fruits and leaves of specific types of Ficus plants. After about a week or so, their injuries would no longer be present.

The way the chimpanzees naturally knew what to eat to regain health amazes me, especially since humans share 98% of their gene makeup with chimpanzees. It just makes me think that maybe humans have the ability to use natural substance to cure illnesses but for some reason we cannot connect with nature in that same way as chimpanzees. Sure, we have doctors and researchers to research and create medicines that treat us, but we seem to have a hard time finding natural medications. This has encouraged me to look more into herbal medications and natural ways of healing. But this does not mean that I am opposed to perscription drugs. I would like to look at it more from a dietary prespective. It would be interesting to see if by adding certain herbs, vegetables, or spices to our diets, we could prevent illnesses from happening.