It's interesting for sure, but the mystery is how he gained that knowledge. Is he just repeating what he's seen humans do or his ancestors?
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Wild orangutan seen healing his wound with a plant
31–40 of 165 posts
Re: Wild orangutan seen healing his wound with a plant
#32It's interesting for sure, but the mystery is how he gained that knowledge. Is he just repeating what he's seen humans do or his ancestors?
Aren’t we faced with the same fundamental mystery of human insight? Where does it come from?
Re: Wild orangutan seen healing his wound with a plant
#33Re: Wild orangutan seen healing his wound with a plant
#34Dogs eat grass when they need to throw up.
Re: Wild orangutan seen healing his wound with a plant
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have some background in pharmacology, particularly psychopharmacology and I can tell you that it's not even remotely true. There's so much studies out there... so, what kind of studies were you reading? For example - Rapamycin/sirolimus, ephedrine, morphine, antibiotics (e.g. penicillins, cephalosporins), psilocin and psilocybin, are the first naturally occuring (in significant quantities) that came to my mind when…
How about referencing (with links) a bunch of concrete relevant studies from psychopharmacology then, to back up your claims?
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Re: Wild orangutan seen healing his wound with a plant
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have some background in pharmacology, particularly psychopharmacology and I can tell you that it's not even remotely true. There's so much studies out there... so, what kind of studies were you reading? For example - Rapamycin/sirolimus, ephedrine, morphine, antibiotics (e.g. penicillins, cephalosporins), psilocin and psilocybin, are the first naturally occuring (in significant quantities) that came to my mind when…
How about referencing (with links) a bunch of concrete relevant studies from psychopharmacology then, to back up your claims?
This is a casual message board; there's no requirement to put that kind of effort into a post here.
You can also do the legwork yourself.
Re: Wild orangutan seen healing his wound with a plant
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think people label plants as inherently alternative medicine. Plenty of non-alternative (aka regular) medicine was originally derived from plants (e.g. aspirin). Things typically become labeled "medicine" when they've been work and have been tested. "Alternative" kind of works like a logical `not`, so applying de Morgan's law that implies that alternative medicine either has not been tested or doesn't work. O…
It's not about what people or scientists say. It's the wrong frame to think about it in. Pharmaceuticals these days run as businesses, and its not financially beneficial for them to even quantify the medicinal qualities of chemically unprocessed plants. Because you can't build a competitive advantage around something like that. So, while they often take inspiration taken from plant based compounds, usually the essent…
I'm pretty sure that the NIH does do studies into efficacy of plants. This was after a ten second Kagi search: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3059459/. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3847409/
I don't know if that counts as "publicly funded medicine", but it's certainly a publicly funded group that studies medicine.
Re: Wild orangutan seen healing his wound with a plant
#38Obviously orangutans are much smarter as a species, they are know to pass down knowledge/behaviors, including tool usage, down generations. But there could be more to this behavior. A dog instinctively knows to eat grass when they have stomach issues and Alaskan Bears eat certain plants to expel parasites after hibernation. How do they know? Zoopharmacognosy is a fascinating subject that needs more research. https://…
When my wife was pregnant the doc said to let them know if she had any cravings for minerals, clay, or something weird like that. Turns out it can mean a vitamin deficiency. Not sure how the mind knows to send out a specific craving besides food and water.
Re: Wild orangutan seen healing his wound with a plant
#39That's pretty cool! Perhaps genetic or innate memory is how he knew what to do? Sort of like dogs eating grass when they are sick?
Orang Utan stay with their mothers for six to seven years to learn what to eat and where to find it, and visit their mothers until they reach the age of 15 or 16. (says https://www.worldwildlife.org/stories/5-remarkable-animal-mo... )
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Re: Wild orangutan seen healing his wound with a plant
#40It would be nice if they could work out what this "medicinal" tree is and start mass-producing this paste because that looks like some serious healing going on there! ... or perhaps orangutans are just way better at this sort of thing that human are? I recently tripped up running and had a much smaller cut (compared to the apparent missing-chunk-of-flesh this orangutan had) on my knee that took several weeks to fully…
> on my knee
Wounds on/near joints are known to heal much more slowly because of the added movement-induced stress. In contrast, facial wounds heal particularly fast¹.
For instance, I had a bike accident last September, which resulted in a small wound on my knee and several bigger, more severe injuries in my face. (I basically did a face plant.) The facial injuries healed within 2 weeks. Meanwhile, to this day people ask me what's wrong with my knee because while the wound has closed, I have severe scar tissue and it still looks like the accident had occurred only a few days ago.
¹) Not sure whether it's true but I read somewhere that this might have been selected for during evolution, since the face plays such a crucial role in communication.