A wild view of medicine

What do chimpanzees, honey bees, wood ants and woolly bear caterpillars have in common? They all practice medicine without a license.

"These animals use medicines that they find in the environment they live in to fight their parasitic diseases," says Emory biologist Jaap de Roode. In a recent TedxEmory talk (see above video), de Roode describes recent findings about "animal doctors" in nature and the potential for humans to learn from them.

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The growing buzz on animal self-medication
The monarch butterfly's medicine kit
Fruit flies use alcohol as a drug to kill parasites