A new study suggests that elephants may seek out plants to eat because they are medicinal, adding to the evidence that elephants may have extensive herbal knowledge and that they may even have taught some of it to us.
African elephants sometimes forage for the stems and leaves of banana and papaya plants and forgo the delicious fruit. Turns out, that may be because they are seeking, not a snack, but a cure. New research shows that elephants are more likely to eat banana and papaya leaves and stem when they have gastrointestinal parasite infestations because they are self-medicating. The leaves and stems of those plants are known to contain anti-parasitic compounds. Strikingly, previous research suggests that humans have learned some of their herbal knowledge by being taught by elephants. A 2020 study of work elephants found that, of the 34 plants used by owners and mahouts to treat elephants, 55% were used the same way in human herbal medicine. So, who learned from whom?
Turns out, 60% were discovered independently by humans and elephants, 32% were used because the owners knew they worked, and 8% were learned by humans from elephants’ self-medicating behaviour. The Smithsonian Institute says that ethnobiologists say that “that the best way to cure a [sick] elephant is to release him into the forest, and he will find what he needs and recover within a few weeks.” They say that elephants in Laos have been observed to eat the roots of a particular plant when they have diarrhea and the roots and stems of another when they are listless and lose their appetite. Female elephants are known to chew certain roots during pregnancy and nursing.
This intriguing research suggests that, not only do elephants have extensive herbal knowledge, but that humans “got much of [their] knowledge from elephants as part of a cross-cultural exchange” between species.