In Indonesia, scientists saw something they had never documented before.
A wild Sumatran orangutan named Rakus had a large wound on his face, probably from a fight. A few days later, researchers watched him eat a plant called Fibraurea tinctoria. Then he chewed the leaves and carefully rubbed the plant juice onto his wound.
He did this several times.
The plant is not a normal part of an orangutan’s diet. People in Southeast Asia have also used it as traditional medicine, and scientists know that it contains compounds with antibacterial and anti-inflammatory properties.
Within about a week, Rakus’s wound had closed. A month later, it had healed almost completely.
What I find most interesting is that Rakus did not just happen to eat the plant. He put it directly on the injured part of his face.
Did he know it would help?
We cannot ask him. Maybe he discovered it by accident. Maybe he learned it from another orangutan. Or maybe this is knowledge that orangutans have carried for generations and humans are only beginning to notice.
We often think of animals as creatures we need to study and protect.
But sometimes they may also have something to teach us.
There could be medicines hidden in forests that humans have never discovered, but that animals already know how to find. If those forests disappear, we may lose more than the animals living in them. We may lose knowledge before we even know it exists.
Daniel Kim, January 2025