Thread by @weatherindia

Rekambo chimps in #Gabon’s forests are applying insects to each other’s wounds! 🐵🪰

Whether it's merely a gesture of goodwill or a medication practice, we don't know for sure yet.

Read: weather.com/en-IN/india/sc…

📸: Pixabay (Via Canva)

Thread. 👇

Back in 2019, @alessandra_masc, a volunteer at the Loango Chimpanzee Project in #Gabon, recorded a female chimpanzee named Suzee and her son, Sia.

In the video, Suzee plucked an #insect from the underside of a leaf, squeezed it b/w her lips, & applied it to Sia's gash.

Such behaviour had never been observed or documented before!

In the year following the incident, researchers filmed all chimps with injuries. They gradually built up a record of 22 events, most of which involved individuals applying insects to their respective wounds.

Nearly a year after @alessandra_masc's observation, @lara_southern observed another interesting event with Littlegrey, an adult male.

Littlegrey had a deep open wound on his shin, & Carol, an adult female who'd been grooming him, suddenly reached out to catch an insect.

Along with Carol, two other adult chimpanzees touched the wound while Littlegrey applied the insect to it.

This demonstrated ‘prosocial’ behaviour, where the three unrelated chimpanzees performed these acts solely for the benefit of their group member.

Self-medication, where individuals use plant parts to kill pathogens, has been observed across multiple animal species, said cognitive biologist Simone Pika.

But the external application of animal matter on open wounds has previously been unheard of in the #animal kingdom.

Researchers from the @ozougachimps & Osnabrück seem to think that the insects the chimps used might possess anti-inflammatory/antiseptic effects.

Or, such behaviour is simply a display of empathy & has nothing to do with providing medical aid.