‘Doctors, Scientists Stunned;’ Study Found Elephants Running Secret Forest Hospital

● What to Know About 35 Plants the Genius Elephants of Mount Elgon Use To Heal Their Babies – 25 Already in Human Medicine

In the mist-covered caves of Mount Elgon, Kenya, Africa’s most mysterious elephants have been caught running a pharmacy.

These are no ordinary jumbos. Known globally as salt-mining elephants for their strange habit of plunging deep into pitch-black caves to scrape minerals with their tusks, they have now stunned scientists with an even more extraordinary secret – they are self-medicating doctors.

A groundbreaking study interviewing the men who live and shadow them has revealed the giants use more than 35 different plants to treat themselves and their families when sickness strikes.

And 25 of those plants, researchers found, are the exact same remedies local communities use to cure stomach aches and other ailments. The forest, scientists say, is their natural pharmacy.

The research, led by Dr Elodie Freymann of Brown University in the US and Dr Fabien Schultz of Germany, in collaboration with the Mount Elgon Foundation, did not follow elephants with binoculars. It followed human knowledge.

The team turned to wildlife scouts and community elders – the true custodians of the Elgon forest – who shared intimate, years-long accounts of what they had seen on patrol.

The most tantalising testimony came from a scout who described a mother elephant acting like a paediatrician. She would select a plant locals call Angurweet, famous for curing stomach ache, strip its leaves, chew it with roots until smooth, mix it with her own milk, and feed it to her calf.

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The baby, he said, would chew the herbal paste and spit out the solids – a bush baby-medicine ritual never before documented so vividly.

Scientists who were not part of the study called the account fascinating. Professor Michael Huffman of Nagasaki University, a world expert on animal self-medication, said it was “tantalising” evidence that elephants may provide bespoke medical care for their young, though more video proof is needed.

That proof is now being hunted. The researchers have handed cameras to the local scouts and begun laboratory analysis of the 35 plants to see if the elephants have discovered medicines humans have not yet found. As Dr Schultz told the BBC: “Local knowledge has given us a map.”

History suggests they are onto something big. The earliest record of an elephant doctor dates back to the 3rd Century, when Roman author Claudius Aelian wrote of a wounded elephant that ate olive flowers and oil and made a full recovery.

From chimps using forest first-aid to orangutans applying leaf poultices to wounds, nature’s medicine cabinet is vast. But the Mount Elgon elephants may be its most sophisticated chemists.

For Dr Freymann, the discovery carries a dire warning. If we destroy these forests for timber and farmland, we are not just wiping out elephants.

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“There are medicine-producing organisms on this planet that have this incredible capability,” she said. “Medicine factories that exist all around us.”

“Researchers documented 35 plant species used by the elephants, but only four – Angurweet and three others – identified in public summaries. The full list of 35 is held as herbarium specimens at the East African Herbarium for further pharmacological testing.”

Thr four plants named in public reports so far, according to NOP NIGERIA, are:

1. Angurweet – for stomach ache, given by mothers to calves with milk
2. Podocarpus latifolius (Podo tree) – bark tusking observed
3.Dombeya rotundifolia – bark tusking observed
4. Juniperus procera (Cedar tree) – bark tusking observed

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The full botanical list with herbarium vouchers is deposited at the East African Herbarium and inside the actual Scientific Reports paper, not in the press release.

NOP NIGERIA