Have you ever ever seen your cat or canine consuming grass? They achieve this as a result of it might probably assist their digestion, and lots of wild species use pure substances to stop and management illnesses or to repel parasites. That is known as “zoopharmacognosy” or, extra generally, animal self-medication.
This apply, which may have prophylactic (supposed to stop illness) or therapeutic (supposed to heal it) capabilities, contains all kinds of behaviours, such because the consumption of medicinal vegetation, soil, or the appliance of drugs to the physique. For instance, many species eat filth to accumulate important minerals and likewise facilitate digestion. In mammals, zoopharmacognosy has been noticed in elephants, bears, elk and a number of other carnivore species, and it’s particularly well-known in primates.
On the Laboratory of Primatology of the State College of São Paulo in Brazil, our staff research the behavioural ecology of the black lion tamarin (Leontopithecus chrysopygus), also called the golden-rumped tamarin. It is a small neotropical primate, endemic to the Brazilian Atlantic forest and at the moment threatened with extinction.
One a part of this undertaking, which is the topic of my PhD, focuses on the research of the physiological and behavioural responses of tamarins to fragmentation and decline in habitat high quality.
An expedition to Brazil
Within the area, we comply with a number of teams of tamarins inside fragments of the Atlantic forest to gather behavioural information and faecal samples for subsequent hormonal evaluation. Usually, we wakened at daybreak and adopted the tamarins from the time they left their sleeping website till they returned to sleep, a little bit earlier than sundown.
Throughout one in all these every day research, we noticed them rubbing their our bodies on the trunk of a tree coated with resin. At first we thought that the tamarins have been marking their territory, a behaviour that’s widespread on this species. However we quickly realised that it was one thing else. In truth, the people within the group have been collectively rubbing the realm of the trunk from which the resin emanated and have been additionally coating their fur with it. Our first intuition was to document the scene and take samples of the bark and resin to establish the essence of the tree.
After we took the bark pattern again to the household that was internet hosting us throughout our area campaigns, the hostess instantly recognised the peculiar scent of this tree, which the locals name cabreúva. Certainly, the resin produced has a really woody scent with tones of cinnamon, clove, honey and pine. Our botanical professional later confirmed that it was a species of cabreúva, Myroxylon peruiferum, a tree well-known in conventional drugs for its antibiotic, anti-inflammatory and anti-parasitic properties.
The usage of this tree by the tamarins was fairly intriguing, so we determined to position camera-traps on the foot of the cabreúvas to document future visits by the tamarins. We put in them in three completely different websites within the state of São Paolo: the Morro do Diabo State Park and in two forest fragments, in Guareí and Santa Maria. The camera-trap data surprisingly revealed that many mammals residing within the Atlantic forest visited the cabreúvas. In complete, 10 completely different species have been noticed rubbing or licking the resin exuding from the trunks of those timber. These included a number of emblematic neotropical mammals such because the ocelot, the collared anteater, the ring-tailed coati, the tayra, the collared peccary and the purple daguet.
For a lot of of those species, this was the primary time that behaviour much like self-medication was noticed and described. For instance, anteaters used their giant claws to tear open the bark and stimulate resin secretion earlier than rubbing their our bodies in opposition to the uncovered trunk. Much more surprisingly, peccaries unfold resin on one another’s fur in pairs and face to face. On the whole, the species appeared to particularly go to the tree to accumulate the resin and presumably profit from its many virtues.
Whereas additional research are wanted to establish the properties of the resin sought by the animals and thus verify that that is certainly zoopharmacognosy, using this essence in conventional drugs means that mammals go to cabreúvas to heal their wounds and repel parasites. For lion tamarins, using cabreúva resin may play an vital position within the battle in opposition to yellow fever, a mosquito-borne illness that decimates primate populations.
Cabreúva may due to this fact characterize a standard and common pharmacy for the residents of the Brazilian Atlantic Forest. Myroxylon peruiferum is more likely to be a beneficial – and contested – useful resource that would assist the species that use it to keep up their populations by bettering their well being and rising their reproductive success. This discovery may have an vital conservation implications, because the disappearance of this species from degraded forest fragments may doubtlessly have an effect on the survival of some species.
Olivier Kaisin is a PhD Pupil at Université de Liège.
This text first appeared on The Dialog.
