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'Self-medication' Helps Chimpanzees Fight Off Malaria
February 20, 2008 at 8:21 PM
General Health News
According to a report in National Geographic News, Clay soils consumed by both chimps and humans in Uganda's Kibale National Park contain high concentrations of the mineral kaolinite, a main ingredient in some anti-diarrheal medications.
Experts had previously suggested that chimps ate the fine-grained clay to help ward off intestinal ailments or to obtain added minerals in their diet.
But a French team recently observed that the chimps eat dirt before or after consuming leaves from the Trichilia rubescens plant, which contains potent medicinal chemicals.
According to the researchers, eating the bitter vegetation alone gives the chimps no health benefit. Instead, the plant's malaria medicine is activated when fine soil particles bind with chemicals in the leaves.
'Chimps often select dirt that has been exposed on the roots of newly fallen trees,' said study co-author Sabrina Krief, of the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris. 'This may be to avoid worms, bacteria, and stones,' she explained.
Soil-eating may also provide a soothing coating to the animals' digestive tracts.
Though in humans, soil consumption has often been viewed as a sign of metabolic disorder or even mental illness, the practice is relatively common among animals and is now understood to yield important health benefits.
Like humans, chimps can suffer the potentially fatal effects of malaria, although the types of Plasmodium parasites that cause the disease in chimps are different from the four known to infect people.
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