Rakus chewed plant leaves known to have pain-relieving and healing properties, rubbed the juice on the open wound—and then used the leaves as a poultice to cover his injury. Within five days, the wound had closed. And by July 19—around a month after the injury was likely sustained—the wound appeared to have fully healed and only a faint scar remained.
Original article by Bill Chappell, Research News, NPR
Photo: Armas / Suaq Project
Recently, the story of Rakus, a wild orangutan in Indonesia, made
headlines when he was observed treating a wound on his face. It is
the first known case of active wound treatment in a wild animal with
a medicinal plant.When a wild orangutan in Indonesia suffered a
painful wound to his cheek, he did something that stunned
researchers: He chewed plant leaves known to have pain-relieving and
healing properties, rubbed the juice on the open wound — and then
used the leaves as a poultice to cover his injury.
“This case represents the first known case of active wound treatment
in a wild animal with a medical plant,” biologist Isabelle Laumer,
the first author of a paper about the revelation, told NPR. She says
she was “very excited” about the orangutan’s seeming innovation,
which was documented at the Suaq Balimbing research site in the
Gunung Leuser National Park in northwest Sumatra, where some 150
orangutans live in a protected rainforest.
The orangutan is named Rakus. Laumer says he might have picked up
the large wound in a fight with a rival male. A few days later, he
was seen using a plant to treat his injury. The wound then healed,
seemingly without any infection.Laumer and another researcher,
Caroline Schuppli, led a team of cognitive and evolutionary
biologists from the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in
Germany and Universitas Nasional in Indonesia.
Rakus was spotted with the new wound on June 22, 2022. Three days
later, he started eating the stem and leaves of a liana — a vine
that researchers say the orangutan population in Suaq rarely eats.
From there, his behavior grew increasingly intentional and specific.
Rakus spent 13 minutes eating the plant, and then he spent seven
minutes chewing the leaves and not swallowing, instead daubing the
plant’s juices onto his wound. When flies began landing on his
wound, Rakus fully covered it with leaf material and went back to
eating the plant.
Within five days, the wound had closed. And by July 19 — around a
month after the injury was likely sustained — “the wound appeared to
have fully healed and only a faint scar remained,” the biologists
said in their paper, published Thursday in Scientific Reports.