this post was submitted on 14 May 2025
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That's certainly a better way to learn about ourselves. Specifically by learning how the chimpanzees select the medicinal leaves and so on.
My roommate in university was studying a group of chimps in Tanzania who ate small quantities of a plant periodically that happened to be a potent dewormer. Apparently it didn’t taste very good, and they were botanists not ethologists, so didn’t verify how they know, just that it was very deliberate, socially reinforced, and it worked. (Late 1980’s study!)