Orangutan filmed treating wound with pain-relieving plant in extraordinary footage

An orangutan has been filmed applying a plant with known pain-relieving properties to a wound in a first for a wild animal.

Researchers from the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior, Germany, and Universitas Nasional, Indonesia, observed a male Sumatran orangutan with a facial wound eating and repeatedly applying sap from a climbing plant with anti-inflammatory and pain-relieving properties commonly used in traditional medicine.

The primate, named Rakus, also covered the entire wound with the green plant mesh.

"Thus, medical wound treatment may have arisen in a common ancestor shared by humans and orangutans," the biologists said.