A recent study in Brazil's Atlantic Forest suggests mammals flock to a particular tree to self-medicate, revealing a sort of 'universal pharmacy' in the ecosystem. Click the link to discover more.
Recent camera-trap footage from Brazil’s Atlantic Forest is probing our understanding of self-medication practices in animals. Researchers, in this case, found evidence that suggests a host of tropical mammals regularly visit particular trees known to play a role in traditional medicine. The work was published in the journalOlivier Kaisin, a Ph.D.
The team set up more camera traps to investigate what the black tamarins were doing. That revealed the behavior wasn’t limited to this one animal.Camera traps strategically placed at different trees showed that many animals dwelling in the Atlantic Forest visit cabreúvas. The list of mammals that rubbed or licked the tree reads like a roll call of tropical biodiversity: ocelots, tayras, coatis, neotropical fruit bats, collared peccaries, northern tamanduas and brocket deer.
“[T]he behaviours they're seeing and describing are certainly consistent with self-medication,” says Dan Blumstein, a professor in Ecology at UCLA, who was not involved in the study. “The novel thing I thought about this was using camera traps and acquiring all this hidden information, things that are occurring out there that people aren't seeing, and then suggesting that this is consistent with self-medication.”Álvaro Mezcua is a Ph.D.
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