21-07-2025
Animals Are the Original Wellness Influencers
Jul 21, 2025 6:00 AM Long before TikTok and probiotics, animals were teaching each other tips on feeling better, from swallowing leaves to get rid of parasites to using icebergs for exfoliation. Illustration: Haeryung Choi
In the early 2010s, researchers in Mexico City noticed that sparrows and finches at the national university were lacing their nests with cigarette butts. The birds would collect the butts—mostly smoked—carefully remove the outer paper layer, and weave fibers from the filters into their homes, among the twigs and grass.
This sort of dubious yet intriguing lifestyle choice will be familiar to anyone who follows health trends. It seems weird—but does it make some kind of backward sense? In this case, the birds were vindicated: The more cigarette filter fibers the nests had, the fewer parasites they harbored, probably because nicotine repels bugs. There are drawbacks, though: Chicks raised in butt nests are more likely to develop blood cell abnormalities. Again, familiar.
While we may not want to follow this particular lead, animals are the original wellness influencers. 'Healers and shamans have looked at animals for thousands of years,' says biologist Jaap de Roode, author of the recent book Doctors by Nature . Some of these discoveries have trickled up: Oshá root—which, as indigenous Americans have long observed, bears like to chew up and rub on their fur—is available in many natural medicine stores for various uses, including pain relief. Other animal wellness trends might not be quite as imitable, sadly, for our species. Illustration: Haeryung Choi Insect Herbalism
Parasites are a top concern for animals and have inspired waves of evolutionary creativity. Some parasite-infected sea slugs shed their entire bodies, then regenerate from the head. But more common is what de Roode calls 'animal medication.' Animals are considered to medicate when they eat or apply an external substance that they normally wouldn't and it helps them 'by preventing or clearing infection or reducing disease symptoms,' he says.
Over the past few decades, more studies have focused on animal medication in a particular group: insects. When woolly bear caterpillars are infected with fly maggots, they begin eating more alkaloid-heavy, parasite-killing plants with no nutritional value. Research has shown that infection changes the caterpillars' buds so that the bitter plants 'taste really good,' de Roode says, perhaps like a saltine when you're finally kicking norovirus. Wood ants fill their nests with foraged spruce resin, which has antibacterial and antifungal effects.
We can learn a lot from bug herbalists, de Roode says. The chemical mixes found in resins and plants may help other animals avoid the drug resistance humans run into with single-chemical medicines. And many insects invest in community and intergenerational health, practicing what some researchers call 'social medication.' For instance, parasite-infected monarch butterfly moms lay their eggs on more medicinally powerful milkweed species, so their offspring won't have to suffer like they do. Monkey Business Ideas
Closeness can help in more direct ways. Social animals, especially primates, also share wellness tricks with one another. Capuchin monkeys will rub themselves with extruded millipede toxin, which serves as a bug repellent and also gets them mildly high. Clusters of capuchins will pass around a potent 'pede.
Great apes get wisdom from others through a behavior called 'peering,' says primatologist Isabelle Laumer. When one ape is doing something, another will come close and watch them intently. Peering and other ways of teaching and learning have led primate groups to develop specific wellness cultures. Chimpanzees, gorillas, and bonobos deal with parasitic infections by gulping down hairy leaves, a practice so widespread it's known as 'leaf-swallowing.' As the leaves pass through the digestive tract, the leaf fuzz grabs parasitic worms and ferries them out. Different ape societies have different leaf-swallowing preferences, their equivalent of family chicken soup recipes.
Also, innovation is a constant, for both human and animal wellness. Research that Laumer and others published in 2024 describes how an orangutan named Rakus made a poultice out of a chewed-up plant and applied it to a big gash on his face. The plant is known to be 'anti-inflammatory, antibacterial, antiviral, antifungal, and pain-relieving,' Laumer says. Rakus turned it into a bandage—a behavior never seen before, meaning he may be an innovator in the orangutan wound care space. Will it become the new leaf-swallowing? Virality is notoriously hard to predict, but who knows—it has a shot. Illustration: Haeryung Choi
Of course, wellness shouldn't just be in response to sickness: It can be proactive, and even fun. Here, we can take inspiration from whales and their inventive exfoliation routines.
Ocean water is thick with viruses and bacteria, and whales must 'shed continuously to maintain healthy skin' and get rid of barnacles, says marine ecologist Olaf Meynecke.
This is challenging for animals with such short limbs, so they have gotten creative. Bowheads in the Arctic rub themselves against craggy rocks, and orcas in the Antarctic do the same with icebergs. Another orca population, the northern residents of British Columbia, have perfected a technique called beach rubbing, where they gather to drag their bellies across smooth pebbles. Summer 2026 TikTok trend, anyone?
In Australia and elsewhere, groups of humpbacks drop down to sandy areas of the seabed and roll, sending 'sand and skin flying around everywhere,' says Meynecke, who was the first to film them performing this behavior. (Fish flocked to eat the nutritious skin flakes.) 'Maybe,' he muses, 'it was a spa.' Humpbacks even supplement their sand treatments with 'kelping'—playing around and rubbing themselves with the seaweed, which has antibacterial properties. Real Vampire Facials
Whales may go to the spa with their friends. For other animals, the spa is their friends. Social grooming—when community members lick each other, comb each other's fur with their fingers, etc.—is a top activity for critters ranging from field mice (who flirt through grooming) and cows (who prefer to groom their twins) to female vampire bats (who will try to nibble off tracking devices that researchers place on their friends).
Grooming helps animals stay clean, but there are additional benefits. It can reduce stress for both participants by slaking a thirst for interaction, says animal behaviorist Gerald Carter. Having someone's teeth and claws so near also 'requires a level of tolerance and trust,' he adds, laying the groundwork for higher-stakes cooperation.
This is especially apparent with female vampire bats, where grooming relationships can graduate into food-sharing ones. If a bat doesn't hunt successfully, her comrades will regurgitate blood into her mouth, potentially saving her life. In one of Carter's experiments, vampire bats consistently spent about 4 percent of their waking time grooming each other whether they really needed it or not, strengthening those bonds for when it matters.
People can learn from this. Most measures of human health are 'correlated with the quality and the quantity of your social relationships,' Carter says. While we may not demonstrate closeness by regurgitating blood, or even low-key mutual scratching, strong friendships mean better health.
