News Animals Wild chimpanzees give first aid to each other A long-term study in Uganda offers glimpses at the origins of human medicine Two chimpanzees groom each other. Chimps in Uganda’s Budongo Forest have also been observed treating each other’s injuries by licking, dabbing with leaves and other methods. E. Freymann By Martin J. Kernan 11 seconds ago For wounded chimpanzees, help sometimes comes in the form of first aid — care rendered not by humans but by other chimps. New research reveals the nature and prevalence of these rarely witnessed events. Thirty years of observations in Uganda’s Budongo Forest reveal that chimp-administered health care — both ape-to-ape care and self-care — happens frequently there, say primatologist Elodie Freymann of the University of Oxford and colleagues. She suspects these behaviors, occasionally glimpsed outside of Budongo, are widespread among chimps. Sign up for our newsletter We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday. Source: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/wild-chimpanzees-first-aid-health-care #wild #chimpanzees #give #first #aid #each #other