India, May 3 -- Finding shows medical wound treatment may have possibly arisen in a common ancestor shared by humans andgreat apes

A male orangutan, on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, has been recorded on video by German and Indonesian scientists using a medicinal plant to treat a wound on his face.

The individual - named 'Rakus' - resides in Suaq Balimbing, a protected rainforest area home to approximately 150 critically endangered Sumatran orangutans.

Cognitive and evolutionary biologists from the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior (MPI-AB) in Konstanz, Germany and Universitas Nasional, Indonesia conducted a study. It was led by Caroline Schuppli and Isabelle Laumer.

"During daily observations of the orangutans, we noticed th...