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We humans think we're so smart. We invented penicillin. We used to go to the moon. Sure, animals are good for a laugh or two, but if one of them gets sick, who's going to take care of it? Either it's some sympathetic human or nobody. It's not like animals have doctors and medicine.

Well ... that's half right.

#6. Chimps Use Parasite Flushers

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We hate to be the ones to bring this up, but you know you could have parasitic worms writhing inside you right now, right? Hopefully you washed your hands after you went to the bathroom and cooked your food thoroughly and didn't drink stagnant puddle water. But every now and then, those suckers will slip through -- right into your insides.

Wikipedia

Put down whatever you were eating -- it's Cracked Science Time(TM)!

Which leads you to wonder how apes and chimps deal with them -- it's not like there's a Purell plant out there, and it's pretty rare that you see jungle animals in an apron and flip-flops grilling up their steaks for safety's sake (although ... can you imagine?). And as brilliant as chimpanzees are, it's not like they've got culinary schools set up to tackle the dangers of invisible-to-the-naked-eye parasites. Do they?

The Medicine: Trichome Plants

It turns out those dumb chimps pretty much completely figured out parasites on their own.

You see, chimpanzees have a very impressive range of facial expressions ...

Matthew Hoelscher

"Angry and nauseous commenter."

... so when biologists saw them eating the bitter stem of a certain plant and making absolutely disgusted though hilarious faces, it was clear that they were not doing it because they liked the flavor.

In other words, the general assumption of "If it tastes bad, it must be good for you" wound up applying to chimps, even though you'd think that, as animals, they wouldn't know anything beyond "This is gross, spit it out." And yet there they were, forcing themselves to eat a plant called Vernonia amygdalina like it was medicine they were choking down.

database.prota.org

Seriously, they'd even fold the leaves up and swallow them whole to avoid chewing them, like a 5-year-old who has been browbeaten into clearing his plate of broccoli. And also like the 5-year-olds swallowing greenery whole, the stuff would leave the body pretty in much the same form it came in. In the case of the chimpanzees, though, the pooped-out leaves were covered in intestinal worms.