Do animals use medicine?
CrowdScience
BBC
4.8 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 26 March 2021
⏱️ 31 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Animals experience all the colds, stomach pains, headaches, parasites, and general illnesses that humans do. But unlike us, animals can’t just grab a painkiller off the shelf at the supermarket to cure it. They don’t have a pharmacy to browse… or at least, not the sort that we’d recognise.
Listener Andrew Chen got in touch to ask whether animals use any kind of medicine themselves. After all, our own drugs largely come from the plants and minerals found in wild habitats. So perhaps animals themselves are using medicines they find in nature.
Presenter Anand Jagatia speaks with the primate researcher who stumbled across a chimp chewing on a bitter leaf 35 years ago, Professor Mike Huffman, whose observations opened up a whole new field of research. We discover why plants contain the medicinal compounds they do, and how butterflies with brains no bigger than a pin-head are still able to select and use medicine to protect their young.
We think of medicine as a human invention - but it turns out that we’ve learnt a lot of what we know from copying the birds, bugs and beasts.
Presented by Anand Jagatia Produced by Rory Galloway
Image: Chimp eating. Credit: Getty Images
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Take some time for yourself with soothing classical music from the mindful mix, the Science of |
| 0:07.0 | Happiness Podcast. |
| 0:08.0 | For the last 20 years I've dedicated my career to exploring the science of living a happier more meaningful life and I want |
| 0:14.4 | to share that science with you. |
| 0:16.1 | And just one thing, deep calm with Michael Mosley. |
| 0:19.4 | I want to help you tap in to your hidden relaxation response system and open the door to that |
| 0:25.5 | calmer place within. Listen on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:29.8 | I was in Tanzania studying chimpanzees in the western part of the country on Lake Tanganyika. |
| 0:40.0 | I was with a tracker, Mohammedi who has worked with our team for a long time, |
| 0:45.4 | and the animals that I was following |
| 0:48.1 | just happened to be joined by this female chimpanzee |
| 0:51.9 | we call Ch shiku. |
| 0:54.0 | You're listening to crowd science from the BBC World Service, |
| 0:57.2 | and today's show is all about what we learned from a rather ingenious chimpanzee. |
| 1:02.7 | And then Chaushiku climbed up in a tree |
| 1:05.8 | and went to sleep. |
| 1:06.7 | She built a nest, which is unusual for chimpanzees |
| 1:09.4 | during the daytime. |
| 1:10.8 | That's primate researcher Mike Huffman. This chimpanzee that he was following, |
| 1:15.4 | Chau Secu, was ill at the time. She left her baby with some of the others in the group |
| 1:20.4 | while she tried to sleep it off, but she woke up still feeling sick. |
| 1:24.7 | And then something extraordinary happened. |
... |
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