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by sdsaga12
1628 days ago
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Wow, there's some intriguing information about chimpanzee behavior in here that I had not encountered in the traditional lore about them: "Since the 1970s, researchers have known that chimpanzees — especially those in Tanzania or Uganda — use medicinal plants. They consume fruits with antimicrobial properties; sometimes they combine them with other substances to reduce the toxicity. Other chimpanzees eat flowers with antibiotic properties or leaves with antiparasitic ones, which act as laxatives or even induce uterine contractions. Chimpanzees also tear off bark and lick the resin to kill internal worms; the compounds, tests in vitro have shown, slow the growth of cancerous cells. Significantly, practices of self-medication vary between chimpanzee populations. When chimpanzees feel sick, they seek out a particular tree and ingest a few leaves. The bitter leaves contain molecules that are quite effective against plasmodium parasites, which cause malaria. But chimpanzees also consume about ten other kinds of plant to combat these organisms." While chimpanzees' speed, volume, and fidelity of cultural transmission aren't supercharged the way early human communication was after our development of complex language, this reads pretty clearly to me as early stage cultural evolution in action. Compare with, for example, the history of human manioc cultivation recounted by Joseph Henrich in "The Secret of our Success". Review here with relevant passages: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/06/04/book-review-the-secret... |
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