Chimps Apply Insects to their Wounds

Christopher Intagliata: Chimpanzees can make tools, they display emotions, and they can outfox humans at certain memory games. But chimps also resemble us in another way—they use medicine. They’re known to eat tough leaves and bitter plants to purge parasites from their guts.   Now researchers have observed chimps applying a never-before-seen type of treatment—snatching flying … Read more

Chimps Use Insects to Soothe Each Other’s Wounds in Never-Before-Seen Behavior

In 2019, Alessandra Mascaro, a volunteer and budding evolutionary biologist for The Loango Chimpanzee Project, noticed something no other primatologist in Africa had reported before.   In the forests of Gabon, while following and filming a female chimpanzee Suzee and her son Sia, Mascaro noticed Suzee clamp something tiny between her lips, before applying the … Read more