Humans and chimps aren’t the only primates to self-medicate. Gorillas and orangutans, our next-closest relatives outside of chimps, do it, too. Remarkably, just as in the case of Vernonia, the adjacent Indigenous human populations use these same plants as medicines. For example, in Borneo, ten orangutans were observed to chew the leaves of Dracaena plants into a soapy froth that the animals then applied to their fur to repel parasites or treat skin diseases. Indigenous people living in the same forests that the orangutans occupy also use a poultice of leaves from this plant to treat several
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