Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Jonathan Luker - Zoopharmacognosy
Jonathan Luker - Zoopharmacognosy
Jonathan Luker - Zoopharmacognosy
young learn from their mothers, or from watching others in the troop.
Youngsters in the wild have been observed imitating their sick mother right
after she used a plant for medicine (Bekoff, 2002). This combination of
empathy and imitation is likely reinforced by associating the plant with a
feeling of well-being. It has long been known that animals at many cognitive
levels can form such associations (Bekoff, 2002). I find the imitation proposal
to be the most convincing, since it accounts for both the behavioral plasticity
and the importance of social connections that primates are known for.
So what practical knowledge can we gain from research into
zoopharmacognosy? As we observe animals in the wild and take note of any
evident self-medication, we may be able to find new medicines useful for
humans, just as Babu Kalunde did. Clues about our own history may be even
more significant. Its not much of a stretch to imagine that our early
ancestors learned about medical plants in the same way as other primates.
As they developed fire and cooking, more advanced preparation techniques
removed many secondary compounds from their average diet. The result
was a greater dependence on use of resources specifically as medicine
(Huffman, 2001). With a history like that, its easy to see why our view of
medicine is very different from how its practiced in the wild. Overall, I found
zoopharmacognosy to be a fascinating topic, and I hope to see more
research focused on it in the future.
Works Cited
Bekoff, M. (2002). Minding Animals: Awareness, Emotions, and Heart. New York, N.Y.:
Oxford University Press. Retrieved from
http://search.ebscohost.com.libprox1.slcc.edu/login.aspx?
direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=146935& site=ehost-live&ebv=EB&ppid=pp_69
Cowen, R. (1990). Medicine on the Wild Side. Science News, 138(18), 280282.
Retrieved from
http://www.jstor.org.libprox1.slcc.edu/stable/3974722
Huffman, M. A. (2001). Self-Medicative Behavior in the African Great Apes: An
Evolutionary Perspective into the Origins of Human Traditional Medicine. Bioscience,
51(8), 651661.
http://doi.org.libprox1.slcc.edu/10.1641/00063568(2001)051[0651:smbita]2.0.co;2