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Do Animals Take Drugs?What do you do without a pharmacy? |
By Stefan Anitei, Science Editor
16th of January 2007, 15:42 GMT
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Animals can not rely on a physician to indicate them drugs when they do not feel OK. Instead, they do something we thought it was pure human: they appeal to nature's medicine.
Biologists witnessed amazing facts while studying African fauna near a salted lake from the Great African Rift (Eastern Africa). The water of some of these lakes is extremely caustic, burning human and animal skin. But a limping hyena entered the lake.
The water burns the wound like iodine does, and even if the animal is suffering, it feels that it makes good and stands calmly the pain. After that, two gazelles appeared and a wounded jackal. After
some moments, appeared a group of zebras, accompanying a limping one till the edge of the lake.
Suddenly, two lions made their appearance. They came to heal their wounds and do not pay attention to so many potentially easy preys; zebras too, do not seem to intend running away. Biologists did not see something similar before: the curing bath triggers a perfect truce between predators and prey!
But when the animals do not have a healing lake, what do they do? Wounded roe deer rest on moss pillows, but not because of the softness. The moss contains very effective antibiotics, which act like penicillin on the open wound.
Brown bears put by themselves a bleeding paw in a bee hive. The bees' venom contains a strong antibiotic that protects against disease (and is found also in honey in small amounts).
Penguins breed in huge colonies, which would be prone to epidemics. But oceanologists found that the crustaceans they eat consume some algae very reach in an antibiotic which heals any infection in penguin colonies.
The beaver spreads a scent which, in one side, attracts the female, but, by the other side, contains aspirin. They eat a lot of tree bark, and some (poplar, willows, aspens, cottonwoods) are extremely reach in aspirin.
When rats are chased for a long time, they can develop gastric ulcer, due to the stress. In this case, they eat unripe bananas which stimulates the recovery of the mucosa, healing the stomach wounds. When wolves have stomach aches, they eat nettle leaves which provoke them vomit. The jackdaws walls its nest with fresh tomato leaves against parasites.
Chimpanzees use different plant species against stomach aches and heal eczemas with fig leaves, while the leaves of a vine are used against fever.
Scientists have started to monitor chimpanzee pharmacopeia, in order to discover new natural drugs, more efficient drugs and free of secondary effects.
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Good (3.8/5) |
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User opinions: |
| Comment #1 by: hannah riley on 19 Feb 2008, 11:50 GMT |  reply to this comment | i Think it is very bad the way people give animals drugs because they could die or anything and you dont know wether the right drug is being tested on them and something might happen. |
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