--- title: A Wild Orangutan Used a Medicinal Plant to Treat a Wound, According to New Study | TIME description: An orangutan appeared to treat a wound with medicine from a tropical plant— the latest example of how some animals attempt to soothe their own ills with remedies found in the wild, according to a new study. canonical: https://time.com/video/gK08ipK1/ og:title: A Wild Orangutan Used a Medicinal Plant to Treat a Wound, According to New Study og:description: An orangutan appeared to treat a wound with medicine from a tropical plant— the latest example of how some animals attempt to soothe their own ills with remedies found in the wild, according to a new study. og:url: https://time.com/video/gK08ipK1/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/gK08ipK1/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: A Wild Orangutan Used a Medicinal Plant to Treat a Wound, According to New Study twitter:description: An orangutan appeared to treat a wound with medicine from a tropical plant— the latest example of how some animals attempt to soothe their own ills with remedies found in the wild, according to a new study. twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/gK08ipK1/poster.jpg?width=720 --- # A Wild Orangutan Used a Medicinal Plant to Treat a Wound, According to New Study > Sponsored content. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: A Wild Orangutan Used a Medicinal Plant to Treat a Wound, According to New Study [Watch (HLS stream): A Wild Orangutan Used a Medicinal Plant to Treat a Wound, According to New Study](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/gK08ipK1.m3u8) (3:01)  _Published 2024-05-03. An orangutan appeared to treat a wound with medicine from a tropical plant— the latest example of how some animals attempt to soothe their own ills with remedies found in the wild, according to a new study._ --- May 4, 2024 3:30 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [Marijuana Use Is on the Rise Among Baby Boomers According to a New Study](/video/kB9Wd7qa/) ### Marijuana Use Is on the Rise Among Baby Boomers According to a New Study [5 Soothing Products to Help Treat Sunburn](/video/gfwLljhu/) ### 5 Soothing Products to Help Treat Sunburn [Breakdancing Orangutan ](/video/204g7LWM/) ### Breakdancing Orangutan --- ## Transcript Is it the first time that the observed a wild Rae tape using a plant a potent medical plant in order to treat his wounds. He was observed feeding on this plan for 13 minutes and then he continued to ring but stop swallowing and put the plants that from his mouth precisely on to the and he repeated this behavior for 7 minutes. So over and over he put Plants app onto the wound and then later you also talked the more solid plant matter from his mouth and put it on top of his phone is fully covering the wound humans show active warrants treatment. And we also know that chimpanzees show String Band is the example of the chimpanzees in Gabon and also now a some great apes so I lied so much when orangutan take shower balloons treatment therefore it's possible that they exist that could comment and the line mechanism for the recognition. And also application of substances with medical or functional properties to Boones and it's also possible that our last common ancestor already showed similar appointment Behavior. Orangutan maia's when they are in puberty or after puberty, they dispersed over white distances to establish a new home range in another area and we know that that was was not born in the area. So it's possible that the behavior has actually shown in his birth population and he might have learned it from his mother or another orangutan and we know that orangutans do social learning so they show appearing which is a close distance observation of another so they sometimes Come Close 10 to 20 cm sing another for example processing in opening a fruit in order probably to learn the mechanism how to do it. Right? So on its own if this was the only report on on anything related to medication you would say, well we need more evidence right and I think we still do need more evidence. We need to know. If you do orangutans do this more generally bus, it really does the mixture of the saliva and the plan that helped wound heal faster. It didn't get infected because of that. Those are all really difficult questions to answer in primates, especially in the wild and so often times these these observations, but I think there is a few key things here that really make me convinced that it is a form of animal cells medication and one of them is very directed a mother was doing ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"A Wild Orangutan Used a Medicinal Plant to Treat a Wound, According to New Study","description":"An orangutan appeared to treat a wound with medicine from a tropical plant— the latest example of how some animals attempt to soothe their own ills with remedies found in the wild, according to a new study.","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/gK08ipK1/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2024-05-03T20:06:51.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/gK08ipK1.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/video/gK08ipK1/","duration":"PT3M1S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/video/gK08ipK1/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}} ```