Elephants use medicinal plants to treat themselves, researchers find
Researchers have found that African elephants in Kenya use over 35 different plant species to treat themselves and their calves when ill. This study, based on interviews with local experts, highlights the complex relationship between wildlife and natural medicinal resources. The findings raise concerns about how habitat destruction may deprive both animals and humans of essential medicines.
- ▪A study published in Scientific Reports identified 35 plant species used by elephants in the Mount Elgon region of Kenya for medicinal purposes.
- ▪Local wildlife scouts and elders reported observing elephant mothers chewing specific plants and mixing them with milk to treat sick calves.
- ▪The research team is now using camera traps and plant analysis to verify these behaviors and investigate the biological activity of the selected plants.
- ▪Lead researchers suggest that the destruction of forest habitats could negatively impact the availability of natural medicines for both wildlife and humans.
BBC News — Science publishes from United Kingdom and files mainly under science. We currently carry 251 of its stories.
Story provenance
Source · retrieval · rights · ranking — open for full record
inspect →
Story provenance
Attribution is not the same as permission. This drawer separates discovery metadata, excerpts, WeSearch-generated summaries, reuse status, and whether the publisher receives the visit. Nothing here claims a legal grant the publisher has not made.
Record
| Original publisher | BBC News — Science |
| Canonical URL | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cv1j4yr6j2p0o?at_medium=RSS&at_campaign=rss |
| Publication time | Thu, 24 Sep 2026 11:42:42 GMT |
| Retrieval time | 2026-09-24T11:45:27.040Z |
| Last seen | 2026-09-24T11:45:27.040Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | VDG88WO3oB3N · 1 stories |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
Rights status (four layers)
WeSearch handling by dimension
| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
Elephants use medicinal plants to treat themselves, researchers findImage source, Mount Elgon FoundationImage caption, Accounts from local experts revealed that wild elephants used more than 35 plants, many of which have known medicinal uses ByVictoria GillScience correspondent Published2 minutes agoAfrican elephants use dozens of different medicinal plants to treat themselves and their families when they are sick.This is the conclusion of a study which interviewed people who live and work alongside the elephants in the Mount Elgon region of Kenya. These particular animals have long intrigued scientists with their extraordinary behaviour - they are known as salt-mining elephants, because they go into caves and scrape the rock with their tusks to extract minerals for their diet.
…
Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at BBC News — Science.
Discussion
0 commentsMore from BBC News — Science
