Health In The Wild
Many animals seem able to treat their illnesses themselves. Humans may have a thing or two to
learn from them.
A. For the past decade Dr Engel, a lecturer in environmental sciences at Britain’s Open
University, has been collating examples of self-medicating behavior in wild animals. She recently
published a book on the subject. In a talk at the Edinburgh Science Festival earlier this month,
she explained that the idea that animals can treat themselves has been regarded with some
skepticism by her colleagues in the past. But a growing number of animal behaviourists now
think that wild animals can and do deal with their own medical needs.
B. One example of self-medication was discovered in 1987. Michael Huffman and Mohamedi
Seifu, working in the Mahale Mountains National Park in Tanzania, noticed that local
chimpanzees suffering from intestinal worms would dose themselves with the pith of a plant
called Veronia. This plant produces poisonous chemicals called terpenes. Its pith contains a
strong enough concentration to kill gut parasites, but not so strong as to kill chimps (nor people,
for that matter; locals use the pith for the same purpose). Given that the plant is known locally
as “goat-killer”, however, it seems that not all animals are as smart as chimps and humans.
Some consume it indiscriminately, and succumb.
C. Since the Veronia-eating chimps were discovered, more evidence has emerged suggesting
that animals often eat things for medical rather than nutritional reasons. Many species, for
example, consume dirt—a behaviour known as geophagy (⻝⼟癖). Historically, the preferred
explanation was that soil supplies minerals such as salt. But geophagy occurs in areas where the
earth is not a useful source of minerals, and also in places where minerals can be more easily
obtained from certain plants that are known to be rich in them. Clearly, the animals must be
getting something else out of eating earth.
D. The current belief is that soil—and particularly the clay in it—helps to detoxify the defensive
poisons that some plants produce in an attempt to prevent themselves from being eaten.
Evidence for the detoxifying nature of clay came in 1999, from an experiment carried out on
macaws by James Gilardi and his colleagues at the University of California, Davis. Macaws eat
seeds containing alkaloids, a group of chemicals that has some notoriously toxic members, such
as strychnine. In the wild, the birds are frequently seen perched on eroding riverbanks eating
clay. Dr Gilardi fed one group of macaws a mixture of a harmless alkaloid and clay, and a second
group just the alkaloid. Several hours later, the macaws that had eaten the clay had 60% less
alkaloid in their bloodstreams than those that had not, suggesting that the hypothesis is correct.
E. Other observations also support the idea that clay is detoxifying. Towards the tropics the
amount of toxic compounds in plants increases—and so does the amount of earth eaten by
herbivores. Elephants lick clay from mud holes all year round, except in September when they
are bingeing on fruit which, because it has evolved to be eaten, is not toxic. And the addition of
clay to the diets of domestic cattle increases the amount of nutrients that they can absorb from
their food by 10-20%.
F. A third instance of animal self-medication is the use of mechanical scours to get rid of gut
parasites. In 1972 Richard Wrangham, a researcher at the Gombe Stream Reserve in Tanzania,
noticed that chimpanzees were eating the leaves of a tree called Aspilia. The chimps chose the
leaves carefully by testing them in their mouths. Having chosen a leaf, a chimp would fold it into
a fan and swallow it. Some of the chimps were noticed wrinkling their noses as they swallowed
these leaves, suggesting the experience was unpleasant. Later, undigested leaves were found on
the forest floor.
G. Dr Wrangham rightly guessed that the leaves had a medicinal purpose—this was, indeed,
one of the earliest interpretations of a behaviour pattern as self-medication. However, he
guessed wrong about what the mechanism was. His (and everybody else’s) assumption was that
Aspilia contained a drug, and this sparked more than two decades of phytochemical research to
try to find out what chemical the chimps were after. But by the 1990s, chimps across Africa had
been seen swallowing the leaves of 19 different species that seemed to have few suitable
chemicals in common. The drug hypothesis was looking more and more dubious.
H. It was Dr Huffman who got to the bottom of the problem. He did so by watching what came
out of the chimps, rather than concentrating on what went in. He found that the egested leaves
were full of intestinal worms. The factor common to all 19 species of leaves swallowed by the
chimps was that they were covered with microscopic hooks. These caught the worms and
dragged them from their lodgings.
I. Following that observation, Dr Engel is now particularly excited about how knowledge of the
way that animals look after themselves could be used to improve the health of livestock. People
might also be able to learn a thing or two—and may, indeed, already have done so. Geophagy,
for example, is a common behaviour in many parts of the world. The medical stalls in African
markets frequently sell tablets made of different sorts of clays, appropriate to different medical
conditions.
J. Africans brought to the Americas as slaves continued this tradition, which gave their owners
one more excuse to affect to despise them. Yet, as Dr Engel points out, Rwandan mountain
gorillas eat a type of clay rather similar to kaolinite—the main ingredient of many patent
medicines sold over the counter in the West for digestive complaints. Dirt can sometimes be
good for you, and to be “as sick as a parrot” may, after all, be a state to be desired.
1. Questions 1-4
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage?
In boxes 1-4 on your answer sheet, write:
TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this.
1. It is for 10 years that Dr Engel has been working on animal self-medication.
2.In order to find plants for medication, animals usually need to walk a long distance.
3.Birds such as Macaw, are seen eating clay because it is a part of their natural diet.
4.According to Dr Engel, it is exciting that research into animal self-medication can be helpful in
the invention of new painkillers.
2. Questions 5-9
Complete the notes below using NO MORE THAN ONE WORD from the passage.
Write your answers in boxes 5-9 on your answer sheet.
Reading Health In The Wild
3. Questions 10-13
Complete the summary below using words from the box.
Write your answers, A-H, in boxes 10-13 on your answer sheet.
A. mineral
B. plants
C. unpleasant
D. toxic
E. clay tablets
F. nutritional
G. geophagy
H. harmless
Animal self-medication has been supported by an increasing amount of evidence. One of them
is called 10 ________, a soil-consuming behavior commonly found across animal species.
Because earth, especially clay, can neutralize the 11 ________ content of their diet. Similar
behavior can also be found among humans in Africa, where patients will buy 12 ________ at
medical stalls to heal them. Another one is related to chimps who eat leaves with 13 ________
taste probably, but with medicinal value due to their special structure.
