A scientific study concluded that African elephants use dozens of different types of medicinal plants to treat themselves and their family members when they suffer from illness.
The study relied on conducting interviews with people who live and work near elephants in the Mount Elgon region in Kenya.
These animals have long drawn the interest of scientists because of their exceptional behavior. They are known as “salt mining elephants,” because they enter caves and scrape rocks with their tusks to extract the minerals they need in their diet.
This newly published study indicates that elephants themselves use several different types of plants in the forest for medicinal purposes.
Elodie Freeman, one of the lead researchers on the study from Brown University in the United States, says that this study raises the question of whether the destruction of forest habitats deprives animals, and humans as well, of the medicines they need to grow and recover.
Speaking to the BBC, Freeman added: “This shows how intertwined our medicines are with the non-human world.”
Medicine for baby elephants
The scientists collaborated with the Mount Elgon Foundation, a conservation charity, and conducted interviews with local residents, including wildlife rangers and community elders.
It has been reported that elephants choose certain plants when they show signs of illness, and it has also been reported that elephant mothers provide plant materials with medicinal properties to their young.
The researchers also concluded that elephants use 35 different types of plants, and that 25 of them are known locally for their medicinal uses.
The study, published by Scientific Reports magazine, did not reveal the names of the people who were interviewed, in order to preserve the confidentiality of the participants and allow them to freely share their stories.
Their accounts reveal some interesting details. In one testimony, a wildlife scout described seeing elephants using a plant known as angroete as “medicine to give to young ones.”
The "Angroot" plant is used to treat a number of symptoms, including stomach pain. The scout described the elephant mothers preparing the plant in their mouths, saying: "They remove the leaves and chew them until they become soft, along with the roots of some other trees."
He added that he saw mothers mixing this plant material with their milk, and said: “They give it to the young, who chew it themselves and then spit out the solids.”
Professor Michael Hoffman, a primatologist based in Japan and now at Nagasaki University, says this particular story is “very interesting”, but proving that elephants provide personalized medical treatment to their young will require more evidence.
Scientists have already begun collecting this evidence, equipping the local wildlife experts they collaborate with with cameras to document the behaviors they see.
They also analyzed plants used by elephants, looking for new medicines that the elephants themselves might have discovered.
“Local knowledge provided us with a map,” Fabian Schulz, another lead researcher on the project from the Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine in Hamburg, told the BBC.
He added: "We now want to follow elephants and study whether they select certain plants in specific health contexts, and whether these plants have relevant biological activity."
Natural medicine factories
Many animals treat themselves using plants and other natural remedies.
The oldest scientific accounts of elephants practicing “self-medication” date back to the early third century.
The Roman writer Claudius Aelian, in his book “On the Nature of Animals,” described an elephant that ate the flowers and oil of an olive tree after being hit by spears and arrows, and the elephant completely recovered.
Centuries later, these scientists are digging deeper into what we can learn from wildlife about the characteristics of plants in the forest habitats in which they evolved.
“There are drug-producing organisms on this planet that have this amazing ability,” Freeman told the BBC. “They are drug factories all around us.”
