London, Jan 7 (ANI): Chimpanzees may be using a watch and learn approach when it comes to recognizing medicinal plants like their elders, according to new findings by scientists.
Shelly Masi of France's National Museum of Natural History in Paris and colleagues observed 44 wild chimpanzees in Uganda for 11 months. They noted that whenever the older chimpanzees ate plants with medicinal value, the younger ones made more attention.
Although the scientists have never studied any cases of animals treating themselves for illnesses, they speculate that the younger chimpanzees may be learning from the group elders.
"Wild apes seldom show disease symptoms, so observations associating illness and a feeding choice may be rare," New Scientist quoted Masi as saying.
In the case of gorillas, studied in the Central African Republic, the team found them paying less attention in similar situations, but they say this may be because gorillas eat more medicinal plants anyway due to larger consumption of vegetation than chimps.
But, like all findings of self-medication by apes, these too are controversial and not entirely convincing to the scientific community.
"... their ideas are out there now, and it's up to the scientific process to replicate or refine them," said Michael Huffman at the University of Kyoto in Japan, who studies self-medication in Africa's great apes. (ANI)
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