The animal world likes to self-medicate

The use of medicine can no longer be considered a solely human trait, if it ever was. An ever-growing list of animals use various chemicals to self-medicate and to treat peers and offspring, usually to fight off and prevent infection.And this list runs the gamut, with the usual suspects — primates chewing on medicinal herbs — as well as some more surprising drug-takers, such as fruit flies, Puppet Robot Model-Science& Technology Museum Product ants and butterflies, a new study finds.

Previously, scientists thought such behavior was unique to primates and more intelligent animals, where self-medication could be learned and passed on from parents to offspring. But according to the study scientists, who examined recent research in the field, animals from insects to chimpanzees may self-medicate as an innate response to parasites and perhaps for other reasons as well.Medication can be taken either in response to an active infection or to prevent future parasitic attacks of an animal or its offspring, according to the paper, Fiberglass Animals Mammoth-Display Item published online Thursday in the journal Science.

Fruit flies, for example, will lay their eggs in more alcoholic fruit when parasitic wasps are hanging around, said Todd Schlenke, an Emory researcher who wasn't involved in the review paper. "In the flies, increased blood-alcohol content causes the wasp maggot parasites living in their blood to die in a particularly gruesome way, by having their internal organs evert outside their bodies through their anuses," Schlenke told LiveScience.Animal medicine can be useful to humans in a variety of ways. For instance, bees collect plant resins with antifungal and antimicrobial properties and bring it back to their hives to help them fight infection. Beekeepers have selected against this trait since resin is sticky and hard to work with; this has likely made bees more prone to infection, de Roode said.