It is"the first known case of active wound treatment in a wild animal with a medical plant," biologist Isabelle Laumer told NPR. She says the orangutan, called Rakus, is now thriving.Researchers in a rainforest in Indonesia spotted an injury on the face of a male orangutan they named Rakus. They were stunned to watch him treat his wound with a medicinal plant.Researchers in a rainforest in Indonesia spotted an injury on the face of a male orangutan they named Rakus.
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.Around a month after applying medicine to his wound, Rakus has fully healed, with only a slightly noticeable scar. This photo was taken roughly two months after the injury was first spotted.
"It also contains jatrorrhizine ."Rakus is a male Sumatran orangutan who is believed to be born in the late 1980s, meaning he was around 32 years old when he was seen applying leaves to his wound. He was first observed in the area in March of 2009. But because orangutans are believed to keep adding skills into adulthood through social learning, the paper adds, it's possible that the treatment strategy could"also spread socially from individual to individual."
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