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1 Human Healers Have Learned From Animals For Thousands of Years
When I first started studying how monarch butterflies use toxic plants as medicine, a lot of scientists scoffed at the idea that an animal as simple as an insect would know how to medicate itself. Many were skeptical even of the use of medicine by chimpanzees, even though these animals have large brains and behave like us in so many other ways.
But humans have known about animal medicine for thousands of years. In fact, healers and shamans have often looked at animals to copy treatments and to discover new drugs. In North America, Native Americans call many human treatments “bear medicine” because they discovered them by watching bears. Oshá root is a good example—it is used as an immune booster to treat coughs, colds, bronchitis, and flu—but it looks like bears also were the first discoverers of aspirin. Healers around the northern hemisphere would see bears coming out of hibernation and eating the bark of willow trees. They copied this behavior to treat inflammation, and scientists later isolated and improved the willow’s salicylic acid to create aspirin.
In Tanzania, healers have developed treatments for stomach upset and bloody diarrhea by copying elephants and porcupines. In South America, people learned about the stimulatory effects of coca leaves by witnessing llamas. In Chinese medicine, healers use a plant called horny goat weed to treat erectile dysfunction. As you can guess from the name, people discovered its properties by witnessing that goats become frisky when eating the plant.
2 My Miniature Poodle Is an Accomplished Pharmacist
Alfred Russel Wallace wrote an essay in 1858 describing the process of evolution through natural selection. It was a beautiful essay, and he really should get a bit more credit for this theory, which we assign almost exclusively to Charles Darwin. That said, in his essay he deprecates domesticated animals, arguing that they are poor versions of wild animals, having lost many of their natural abilities to survive and reproduce.
While it is true that many domesticated animals would no longer make it without our help, they are much more clever than we give them credit for. Take the poodle, which Wallace mentions as an example of an inferior animal. During the COVID-19 pandemic, my family welcomed a miniature poodle into our home. We named him Tukkie, after a Dutch book character. Like so many dog owners before me, I quickly started noticing Tukkie eating grass, and then witnessed his vomiting on several occasions.
In South America, people learned about the stimulatory effects of coca leaves by witnessing llamas.
I learned that many carnivores share this behavior, including wolves, mountain lions, and bobcats. They do it to purge parasites and other unwanted objects from their stomachs and guts. Now I am just in awe when Tukkie eats grass, and I won’t try to stop him (provided I am not worried about pesticides and fertilizers). I am also happy to let him eat dirt. And I have taken him off ultra-processed kibble to instead feed him a whole variety of fresh foods so he can have more say in his own nutrition. Animals have so many ways to heal themselves and to optimize their own diets. Sometimes they do not even need to eat things to get medicinal effects. Research has shown that animals can also get benefits from smelling and inhaling specific odors. So, when we go for walks, I now often let Tukkie decide where we go, so he can find the smells he wants and needs.
3 Some Animal Meds Are Better Than Ours
Humans love to be unique and special. That’s why many of us thought for too long that humans were the only species that could use medicine. It’s also why we think we know better than the animals in our care. When it comes to keeping livestock, we provide animals with a standardized diet that supposedly contains everything the animal needs. The problem is that every animal is unique, and that these standardized diets do not cater to the needs of individual animals. They are also narrowly based on food, and do not contain animals’ natural medicines. To compensate for that, we throw in tons of pharmaceuticals to kill bacteria and parasitic worms. But these drugs never last, as the bacteria and worms quickly evolve resistance. Interestingly, when we let goats, sheep, and cattle assemble their own diets, they are really good at picking out the foods and medicines they need. These natural medicines do not lose their effectiveness as quickly as the antibiotics we produce. And the animals end up eating less, and therefore produce fewer greenhouse gases.
We see a similar story with honeybees. These insects like to collect resin, the sticky stuff that trees produce. They mix it with wax to produce propolis and coat the insides of their hives with it. Propolis protects the bee colony from all sorts of disease-causing pathogens. However, beekeepers don’t like it because it makes the lids stick to the boxes, which makes it difficult to handle the bees. So, beekeepers have selected bees that make less propolis, and they remove it when they can. But now bees are doing poorly, and many hives die out each year because of disease. And the chemicals we use to treat their diseases don’t work well anymore because of resistance. That’s why scientists are developing new hive boxes that allow bees to incorporate plenty of propolis without aggravating beekeepers. Allowing animals to use their own medical knowledge can make animals healthier and protect our own food supply. 
Lead image: Kashaeva Irina / Shutterstock
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