General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region Forums"We humans like to fancy ourselves unique in lots of different ways. - I love this report
Its all about evolution
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/may/14/chimpanzees-use-leaves-to-wipe-bums-and-clean-up-after-sex-study-finds
Humans are not unique in having a host of hygiene and healthcare habits, researchers have found: chimpanzees also wipe their bottoms, tend each others wounds and even clean up after sex, according to a new study.
The research from the University of Oxford is not the first to show that great apes take care of themselves. Scientists have previously found chimpanzees use insects to treat their own wounds and those of others, while orangutans have been observed treating wounds with the sap and chewed leaves of plants with known medicinal properties.
However, the researchers say their study offers fresh insights into such behaviour in chimpanzees, revealing they too apply chewed plant material to their wounds, and suggests health-related care could be more widespread among these primates than previously thought.
We humans like to fancy ourselves unique in lots of different ways. And I think for a long time, we thought that healthcare was one of those ways in which we humans are special, said Dr Elodie Freymann, one of the authors of the study.

CrispyQ
(39,620 posts)I'm not sure where they think we fall if we're not in the plant or animal kingdom.
I was eating lunch in a breakroom many years ago, reading & minding my own business, when a woman at another table with some people she always sat with yelled, "We are not animals! We did not come from monkeys!" Then she went off about how "if we evolved from monkeys why are there still monkeys?"
malaise
(283,991 posts)Ignorance is bliss.
I remember decades ago I was crying like a child after a close relative died and my cat jumped up on the bed and started licking my face - She had never ever seen me cry. I never forgot that,
Brainfodder
(7,280 posts)Or ripped to shreds by the pack directly?
Alas we aren't wolves.
cachukis
(3,195 posts)malaise
(283,991 posts)or instinctive care and empathy for our own and others.
cachukis
(3,195 posts)humans are special. I suggest not any more than any other living creature in the grand scheme.
Sadly, empathy is not universal.
then we select which humans are special by race, ethnicity, gender, and other indices.
Irish_Dem
(69,597 posts)And that humans are more stupid.
Rec
Kid Berwyn
(20,340 posts)malaise
(283,991 posts)😂😂
Kid Berwyn
(20,340 posts)Can't let go... want to send them money...must be glutton for punishment...
Above is my ready Halloween and costume party go-to now, Rev. Baby Billy Freeman.
If you haven't seen the show, Hermana: Start on Season 1 and go through them. They are the lowest, most depraved, violent and funny as hell holy rollers since Robert Mitchum as Preacher Harry Powell scared the heck out of the kids and moms in "The Night of the Hunter."
malaise
(283,991 posts)Thanks
Solly Mack
(94,954 posts)Clouds Passing
(4,706 posts)But sadly, many humans have forgotten that.