medicinal

There are few things better than watching the chimps forage on wild plants. They’re abundant, enriching, healthy (the ones they choose to eat, anyway), and in some cases, even medicinal.  I’ve always wondered about the way the chimps sometimes consume individual blades on grass. In Gombe, chimps have been seen swallowing the rough, hairy leaves of the Aspilia plant. Researchers believe the leaves contains antibiotic and anti-parasitic compounds and that the hairs on the leaves may work to mechanically remove parasites as they pass through the intestines. Whatever the CSNW chimps are doing, it’s different from the way they eat fruits and vegetables, and even different from the way they eat grass at other times (Burrito often eats spring grass by the handful). Do they know something we don’t? Or are they acting upon an instinct that’s been divorced from its evolved application, like the way they weave secure nests out of blankets even though the don’t sleep up in the trees? Maybe grass just tastes better one blade at a time.