Chimps set up forest hospital to heal each other’s wounds as they know ‘first aid’

Chimpanzees are more like humans than originally thought, claim scientists, who captured footage of the primates making a makeshift forest hospital to treat wounds

Chimps are more human than first thought…(Image: ullstein bild via Getty Images)

Scientists were baffled after making a shocking discovery – chimpanzees adopting human behaviours, including making makeshift forest hospitals.

University of Oxford scientists, working with a local team in the Budongo Forest, captured a moment on camera where chimps used herbs and other forest material to treat each other’s wounds and ailments. This researched followed findings last year, that chimps seek out and eat certain plants to self-medicate. Now, experts say they know how to treat certain illnesses and injuries.

Strangely, the chimps even treat other chimps not related to them. Boffins have collected decades of scientific observations to create a catalogue of the different ways in which chimpanzees use the so-called “forest first aid”.

Chimps apply forest material over wounds(Image: Dr Elodie Freymann / SWNS)

Chimps, which share around 98% of their DNA with humans, are apparently learning our behaviours too.

The paper, published in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, extends also to orangutans, gorillas and other primates. The animals have adapted a human-like quality to be able to used natural herbs to treat illnesses.

Part of their longevity and health could be to their own intervention and medicines – like humans.

Lead researcher Elodie Freymann explained there was “a whole behavioural repertoire that chimpanzees use when they’re sick or injured in the wild – to treat themselves and to maintain hygiene”.

Chimps treat each other – and even other animals(Image: Dr Elodie Freymann)

“Some of these include the use of plants that can be found here,” she explained. “The chimpanzees dab them on their wounds or chew the plants up, and then apply the chewed material to the open injury.”

Footage collected in the environment showed a young chimp appearing to chew up a leaf or some sort of forest material and then applying it to an injury on its mother’s body.

Perhaps most strangely, scientists saw that the chimps were also treating wounds of animals they weren’t even related to. This adds to previous theories, that chimps are capable of feeling empathy to other species and each other.

Not only that – it appears the chimps are adopting human hygiene habits too. One chimp was spotted using a leaf to wipe after going to the toilet.

Scientists carried out the study over several years(Image: Dr Elodie Freymann)

When testing the plants used by the chimps, they found they all uniquely had anti-bacterial properties.

Boffins have argued that chimps, in that sense, are more advanced than humans. If dumped in the middle of a forest, most humans wouldn’t survive, but chimps do.

They argue that their intelligence could unlock secrets of the forest unknown to us.

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