Self-medicating gorillas may hold clues to new drugs

Great apes are known to self-medicate by selecting plants with healing properties.

A wounded orangutan recently made headlines for using a plant paste to heal an injury.

In the latest study, botanists recorded the plants eaten by western lowland gorillas in Gabon’s Moukalaba-Doudou National Park.

They selected four trees that were likely to be beneficial, based on interviews with local healers: the fromager tree (Ceiba pentandra), giant yellow mulberry (Myrianthus arboreus), African teak (Milicia excelsa) and fig trees (Ficus).

The bark of the trees – used in traditional medicine to treat everything from stomach complaints to infertility – contained chemicals with medicinal effects, from phenols to flavonoids.