Apes Doing Pharmacy
Abel Pharmboy has a link to a really neat article concerning primate geophagy (dirt eating). The authors of the article noticed that chimps tend to eat dirt right before they eat leaves of Trichilia rubescens, a plant that contains anti-malarial substances. The really cool part is that they found that something in the dirt might enhance the anti-malarial activity of the plant substance! Chimps may have evolved (culturally or biologically) to do some pharmacy! Now that’s cool!
