Dietary selection is an important process for the maintenance of health homeostasis. From the potential plants available in one’s environment, choices are made to ensure a proper balance of nutrients for energy, growth, maintenance, reproduction, and sometimes even their nesting material. Animals also select such plants for their medicinal properties. This rapidly growing field of research is known as animal self-medication. Infection by parasites, viruses, and other pathogens affects an animal’s behavior, health, and reproductive fitness. In response, across the animal kingdom, species have evolved a variety of means by which they counteract these affronts to their health homeostasis. Four basic modes for achieving this are: 1) behavioral avoidance or reduction of disease transmission: 2) ingestion of items with a prophylactic effect: 3) ingestion of substances of direct therapeutic value against pathogens: and 4) external application of these substances to the body or living area for the control of disease transmitting invertebrates or the treatment of wounds. Primates have provided considerable evidence for the control of intestinal parasites across all four modes, and there is much evidence being gathered across the animal kingdom to demonstrate the universality of this adaptive strategy. Traditionally, humans have also looked to the behavior of sick animals for insights into the uses of medicinal plants for themselves and their livestock. In this light, the field abounds with options for research into the applications of phytotherapy in captive and domestic livestock healthcare maintenance. 

Biosketch

Michael A. Huffman is an Associate Professor in the Wildlife Research Center of Kyoto University, Japan.  A native of Denver Colorado, he started his career in primatology as an undergraduate in 1979 with a field study on wild Japanese macaque behavioral ecology of Arashiyama (Kyoto) in the Department of Zoology, Kyoto University. This research became the foundation for his later field studies towards an MSc (1985) and DSc (1989) degrees in the Laboratory of Human Evolution Studies, Kyoto University. 

   In addition to investigations on free-ranging and captive Japanese macaques spanning over 45 years, he has intensively studied the behavioral ecology of wild chimpanzees in Tanzania and Uganda, with a focus on primate host-parasite ecology, primate self-medication, and ethnopharmacology.  Since 2006 he has been conducting fieldwork in Sri Lanka, Taiwan, India, and Vietnam, with collaborations in over 35 countries on all continents. 

   With his students and his many collaborators, Huffman has published extensively in the fields of cultural primatology, animal self-medication, ethnobotany, pharmacology, primate host-parasite ecology, reproductive behavior and physiology, behavioral endocrinology, phylogeography, and historical primatology; including 10 books, over 240 refereed journal articles, book chapters, review articles and other miscellaneous publications.  The research has covered over 15 free-ranging and captive primate species from apes to lemurs, and other mammals in Japan, Taiwan, Sri Lanka, India, Vietnam, China, Bangladesh, Tanzania, Uganda, Guinea, South Africa, Brazil, Italy, and Austria.  He is deeply committed to building bridges through interdisciplinary collaborations and mentoring.  

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Dr Pawel Fedurek (he/his) 

Lecturer in Psychology 

Behaviour and Evolution Research Group (BERG) 

 

Division of Psychology, Faculty of Natural Sciences 

University of Stirling 

Stirling, FK9 4LA 
Scotland, UK 

 

Tel: +44 (0)1786 467844 

Twitter: @fedurekp  @BERG_Stirling​

Staff page | BERG page

 

I aim to reply within 3 working days (my working days are between Monday and Friday). 

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