The surprising ways animals self -heal

Going to a doctor or reaching out to a medicine without a prescription when you feel sick may look like a unique human activities. After all, when was the last time you saw a pigeon with a wing of BUM, which plays a cast? But as scientists are constantly learning, the basis of medicine – the act of doing something to relieve or prevent disease – expands away from the origin of humanity.

In his upcoming book, Doctors by nature: How ants, monkeys and other animals are healedEmory Jaap de Roode University biologist translates the reader through a light and fun study in the complex world of animal medicines.

The book begins with DE ROODE’s research on how the monarch butterflies protect their young from parasites by laying eggs on plants with dairy algae with higher levels of a particular toxin. From there, he cites the work of many other scientists to detail how chimpanzees, ants, bees and even our pets can practice their own form of medicine.

Gizmodo spoke to De Roode about his inspiration for the book, why animals are probably even more common than the value of the reinventing the lessons of the natural world that our ancestors once knew. The following conversation is slightly edited for grammar and clarity.

Ed Face, Gizmodo: What exactly forced you to write a book about animal medicines and to branch in covering so many animals other than the monarch butterfly?

Jaap de Roode: It’s just such a cool topic and I’ve always loved animals. But I met a lot of resistance when I first studied the monarch butterflies and came up with the idea that they could use medicines. And this resistance really stems from this idea that animals should be super smart and have super -big brains and be as much as humans can be (use medicine). So somehow I just wanted to demonstrate that this is not the case. That there are actually so many animals that have these incredible ability to meditate themselves, their offspring and their siblings. This was really important to me – to make people notice. This is exciting, but also so important to realize that for many reasons.

Gizmodo: You provide over a dozen specific examples of animal medicines throughout the book. But it also seems that we are still barely scratching the surface of this phenomenon. Do you expect scientists like you to find countless other animals that practice medicine?

De Roode: Indeed, this area scientifically lasts only since the 1980s of the last century when Mike Hoffman and others I began to look at chimpanzees and now we look at all kinds of insects.

We also see that people are starting to think about it more now. Many of the examples I described in the book really came from Serendipi – people did not seek it, but found it. And so this is another thing I hope to do with the book: to show people that there is something real outside, and instead of finding it by accident, we must start looking for it purposefully. At the moment I am watching my book shelf and I see a mosquito book and, you know, there are some ideas that mosquitoes can actually (self -medication) as adults. Only females suck the blood, and moreover, men and women, when they do not breed, drink any nectar. And we know that nectar has all sorts of plant chemicals in them. So even at this level we can find this Mosquitoes do it also. And this is just one example. So, yes, I think there will be many, much more.

Gizmodo: A common topic you continue to return to is the idea that today’s scientists often rediscover the lessons that people in the past have learned from simply the observation of the animals around them. What are some of the ways in which we and the animals we share our world can benefit from learning more about the types of animal medicines that are happening everywhere?

De Roode: For me, the most surprising thing about writing this book was just to find out how much we knew and how we then got rid of these ideas. And this is especially true for Western society where we love to believe that humans are not part of nature and we must be unique. And so we are always looking for ways that make us better or smarter than other types. This is what we realize that we are just rediscovering things that people have known thousands of years ago.

There are many examples of how traditional healers and shamans have looked at animals to come up with all kinds of medical treatments. And even aspirin probably came from people watching bears coming out of hibernation using the bark of willow trees. So we can see these benefits to detecting drugs. But I think we can take advantage of other ways and for the benefit of animals.

I’m talking about these livestock experiments in the book. And I think it is so fascinating that when you leave sheep and goats and cattle to assemble their own diets – you give them what they need for eating, but you also give them a choice of medicinal plants – that they are actually really good at meeting their individual needs and Also when healing. And this means that we do not have to use antibiotics and antelmints, which then means that we will not create the drug resistance we really suffer right now. So you give animals a better life and is better for their well -being.

The same applies to honey bees. There is this continuing honey crisis of bees. And part of the reason we have a crisis is that we believe that bees are stupid, so we do things for them instead of letting them get together. But Returning this back It will make the bees healthier and this will make us healthier. This will help with all the pollination we need for our food production.

If we do more happier animals, it will do for more happy people.

Gizmodo: Outside your personal work with Monarch butterflies, what is your favorite type of animal medicines you have learned about in your work for the book?

De Roode: My favorite story is the Finks and Sparrows using cigarettes (to Prevent parasitic infections of their nests). And partly, because I knew about research before, but going to Mexico and meeting the researchers there, seeing the nests and seeing the birds, was so compelling. But it also really showed how adaptive animals could be, especially those birds that nest in cities and really adapt to them. And this is a kind of opportunistic, because if there are no cigarettes, they will use other things like nicotine plants or other plants that have chemicals that also work against these parasites. Just seeing how inventive these animals were, it was just such a beautiful story and I really liked it.

Doctors by nature: How ants, monkeys and other animals are healedPosted by Princeton University Press, it will be out on March 4th.