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Animal self-medication refers to the behavior in which animals use natural resources such as plants, dirt, or other substances to treat health issues or improve their well-being. This behavior can include eating specific plants or minerals to detoxify or alleviate symptoms like intestinal worms.
How did Dr. Engel contribute to the study of animal self-medication?
Dr. Engel has spent over a decade collecting examples of self-medicating behavior in wild animals. She has published a book on the topic and presented her findings at the Edinburgh Science Festival, helping to shift the scientific view on this behavior.
What role does clay play in animal self-medication?
Clay, especially the clay in the soil, is believed to help detoxify harmful chemicals found in plants. For example, macaws eat clay to neutralize alkaloids, and elephants consume clay to detoxify their bodies and absorb nutrients more effectively.
Why do chimpanzees eat leaves from specific plants like Aspilia?
Chimpanzees eat the leaves of plants like Aspilia to treat intestinal worms. These leaves have microscopic hooks that help remove the worms from their digestive system, making it an example of self-medication using mechanical means.
Can humans learn from animal self-medication behaviors?
Yes, humans can learn from animal self-medication behaviors. For example, the use of clay in traditional medicine in Africa for digestive issues is similar to the ways animals use clay. Knowledge about animal self-medication may also help improve livestock health.
Healthy Intentions Reading Answers, IELTS Passage
Healthy Intentions Reading Answers can enhance your IELTS reading skills with a detailed guide on animal self-medication. Practice key question types like True/False/Not Given and matching information to improve your comprehension and test performance.
Porishmita .5 Mar, 2025
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Healthy Intentions Reading Answers: The IELTS exam reading section is designed to assess various skills, including the identification of main ideas, locating specific information, and interpreting challenging vocabulary. One way to improve your performance in this section is by practicing Healthy Intentions Reading Answers, a topic that explores fascinating examples of animal self-medication. This passage includes a variety of question types, such as matching features and sentence completion, that will help you develop the skills needed to tackle the IELTS Reading module with confidence. Read through the passage carefully, and apply specific strategies to help you answer each question accurately, aiming for a higher band score in the IELTS 2025 exam.
Healthy Intentions Reading Answers Passage
Healthy Intentions
Paragraph A: For the past decade Dr Engel, a lecturer in environmental sciences at Britain’s Open University, has been collating examples of self-medicating behaviour in wild animals. She recently published a book on the subject. In a talk at the Edinburgh Science Festival earlier this month, she explained that the idea that animals can treat themselves has been regarded with some scepticism by her colleagues in the past. But a growing number of animal behaviourists now think that wild animals can and do deal with their own medical needs.
Paragraph B: One example of self-medication was discovered in 1987. Michael Huffman and Mohamedi Seifu, working in the Mahale Mountains National Park in Tanzania, noticed that local chimpanzees suffering from intestinal worms would dose themselves with the pith of a plant called Veronia. This plant produces poisonous chemicals called terpenes. Its pith contains a strong enough concentration to kill gut parasites, but not so strong as to kill chimps (nor people, for that matter; locals use the pith for the same purpose). Given that the plant is known locally as “goat-killer”, however, it seems that not all animals are as smart as chimps and humans. Some consume it indiscriminately and succumb.
Paragraph C: Since the Veronia-eating chimps were discovered, more evidence has emerged suggesting that animals often eat things for medical rather than nutritional reasons. Many species, for example, consume dirt a behaviour known as geophagy. Historically, the preferred explanation was that soil supplies minerals such as salt. But geophagy occurs in areas where the earth is not a useful source of minerals, and also in places where minerals can be more easily obtained from certain plants that are known to be rich in them. Clearly, the animals must be getting something else out of eating earth.
Paragraph D: The current belief is that soil—and particularly the clay in it—helps to detoxify the defensive poisons that some plants produce in an attempt to prevent themselves from being eaten. Evidence for the detoxifying nature of clay came in 1999, from an experiment carried out on macaws by James Gilardi and his colleagues at the University of California, Davis. Macaws eat seeds containing alkaloids, a group of chemicals that has some notoriously toxic members, such as strychnine. In the wild, the birds are frequently seen perched on eroding riverbanks eating clay. Dr Gilardi fed one group of macaws a mixture of harmless alkaloid and clay, and a second group just the alkaloid. Several hours later, the macaws that had eaten the clay had 60% less alkaloid in their bloodstreams than those that had not, suggesting that the hypothesis is correct.
Paragraph E: Other observations also support the idea that clay is detoxifying. Towards the tropics, the amount of toxic compounds in plants increases and the amount of earth eaten by herbivores. Elephants lick clay from mud holes all year round, except in September when they are bingeing on fruit which, because it has evolved to be eaten, is not toxic. And the addition of clay to the diets of domestic cattle increases the amount of nutrients that they can absorb from their food by 10-20%.
Paragraph F: A third instance of animal self-medication is the use of mechanical scours to get rid of gut parasites, in 1972 Richard Wrangham, a researcher at the Gombe Stream Reserve in Tanzania, noticed that chimpanzees were eating the leaves of a tree called Aspilia. The chimps chose the leaves carefully by testing them in their mouths. Having chosen a leaf, a chimp would fold it into a fan and swallow it. Some of the chimps were noticed wrinkling their noses as they swallowed these leaves, suggesting the experience was unpleasant. Later, undigested leaves were found on the forest floor.
Paragraph G: Dr Wrangham rightly guessed that the leaves had a medicinal purpose—this was, indeed, one of the earliest interpretations of a behaviour pattern as self-medication. However, he guessed wrong about what the mechanism was. His (and everybody else’s) assumption was that Aspilia contained a drug, and this sparked more than two decades of phytochemical research to try to find out what chemical the chimps were after. But by the 1990s, chimps across Africa had been seen swallowing the leaves of 19 different species that seemed to have few suitable chemicals in common. The drug hypothesis was looking more and more dubious.
Paragraph H: It was Dr Huffman who got to the bottom of the problem. He did so by watching what came out of the chimps, rather than concentrating on what went in. He found that the egested leaves were full of intestinal worms. The factor common to all 19 species of leaves swallowed by the chimps was that they were covered with microscopic hooks. These caught the worms and dragged them from their lodgings.
Paragraph I: Following that observation, Dr Engel is now particularly excited about how knowledge of the way that animals look after themselves could be used to improve the health of livestock. People might also be able to learn a thing or two, and may, indeed, already have done so. Geophagy, for example, is a common behaviour in many parts of the world. The medical stalls in African markets frequently sell tablets made of different sorts of clays, appropriate to different medical conditions.
Paragraph J: Africans brought to the Americas as slaves continued this tradition, which gave their owners one more excuse to despise them. Yet, as Dr Engel points out, Rwandan mountain gorillas eat a type of clay rather similar to kaolinite – the main ingredient of many patent medicines sold over the counter in the West for digestive complaints. Dirt can sometimes be good for you, and to be “as sick as a parrot” may, after all, be a state to be desired.
Read the statements below and match each statement with the correct paragraph (A-J).
A chimpanzee self-medication behavior was initially misinterpreted.
The idea of animals self-medicating has gained more support in recent years.
The eating of clay by macaws has been shown to reduce the toxicity of certain chemicals.
Chimpanzees were found to use leaves from various tree species to treat intestinal worms.
Clay is believed to help detoxify harmful chemicals in plants.
Geophagy, the act of eating soil, was initially thought to be due to a lack of minerals.
Some African traditions in using clay for medicinal purposes are similar to Western practices.
True/False/Not Given (Q. 8-13)
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1?
In boxes 8-13 on your answer sheet, write TRUE if the statement agrees with the information FALSE if the statement contradicts the information NOT GIVEN if there is no information
Dr. Engel has always been certain about the benefits of animal self-medication.
The plant Veronia is known to be toxic to both humans and chimps when consumed in large amounts.
Elephants only eat clay when they need to detoxify their bodies.
The chimpanzee’s method of using mechanical scours was identified early on as an effective form of self-medication.
Self-medication behaviors in animals could have implications for improving human and livestock health.
In the past, researchers focused more on the types of chemicals in plants than on how animals physically expel harmful substances.
Healthy Intentions Reading Answers with Explanations
A chimpanzee self-medication behavior was initially misinterpreted.
Answer: G
Location: "However, he guessed wrong about what the mechanism was. His (and everybody else’s) assumption was that Aspilia contained a drug, and this sparked more than two decades of phytochemical research to try to find out what chemical the chimps were after."
Explanation: This refers to the initial misunderstanding of the chimpanzee behavior in using Aspilia leaves, where researchers assumed it was for medicinal purposes due to a chemical compound.
The idea of animals self-medicating has gained more support in recent years.
Answer: A
Location: "The idea that animals can treat themselves has been regarded with some scepticism by her colleagues in the past. But a growing number of animal behaviourists now think that wild animals can and do deal with their own medical needs."
Explanation: This sentence discusses how the idea of animals self-medicating was once doubted but is now gaining more recognition among researchers.
The eating of clay by macaws has been shown to reduce the toxicity of certain chemicals.
Answer: D
Location: "Dr Gilardi fed one group of macaws a mixture of harmless alkaloid and clay, and a second group just the alkaloid. Several hours later, the macaws that had eaten the clay had 60% less alkaloid in their bloodstreams than those that had not..."
Explanation: This refers to the experiment conducted on macaws, where it was shown that clay helps to detoxify harmful alkaloids.
Chimpanzees were found to use leaves from various tree species to treat intestinal worms.
Answer: F
Location: "In 1972 Richard Wrangham, a researcher at the Gombe Stream Reserve in Tanzania, noticed that chimpanzees were eating the leaves of a tree called Aspilia... Later, undigested leaves were found on the forest floor."
Explanation: This describes how chimpanzees select specific leaves to deal with intestinal worms, as part of their self-medication behavior.
Clay is believed to help detoxify harmful chemicals in plants.
Answer: E
Location: "The current belief is that soil—and particularly the clay in it—helps to detoxify the defensive poisons that some plants produce in an attempt to prevent themselves from being eaten."
Explanation: This sentence directly states the belief that clay helps detoxify harmful chemicals found in plants.
Geophagy, the act of eating soil, was initially thought to be due to a lack of minerals.
Answer: C
Location: "Historically, the preferred explanation was that soil supplies minerals such as salt. But geophagy occurs in areas where the earth is not a useful source of minerals..."
Explanation: This describes how the traditional explanation for geophagy (eating soil) was linked to the need for minerals, but further observations suggested otherwise.
Some African traditions in using clay for medicinal purposes are similar to Western practices.
Answer: J
Location: "Rwandan mountain gorillas eat a type of clay rather similar to kaolinite – the main ingredient of many patent medicines sold over the counter in the West for digestive complaints."
Explanation: This links the African use of clay for medicinal purposes to similar practices in Western medicine, particularly for digestive issues.
Dr. Engel has always been certain about the benefits of animal self-medication.
Answer: FALSE
Location: "The idea that animals can treat themselves has been regarded with some scepticism by her colleagues in the past."
Explanation: Dr. Engel herself had faced skepticism about animal self-medication, so she was not always certain about it.
The plant Veronia is known to be toxic to both humans and chimps when consumed in large amounts.
Answer: TRUE
Location: "Its pith contains a strong enough concentration to kill gut parasites, but not so strong as to kill chimps (nor people, for that matter; locals use the pith for the same purpose)."
Explanation: Veronia contains toxic chemicals but in small amounts, it does not harm humans or chimps, which is why it can be used as self-medication.
Elephants only eat clay when they need to detoxify their bodies.
Answer: FALSE
Location: "Elephants lick clay from mud holes all year round, except in September when they are bingeing on fruit which, because it has evolved to be eaten, is not toxic."
Explanation: Elephants do not only eat clay for detoxification; they also consume it regularly for other reasons, such as when fruit is not available.
The chimpanzee’s method of using mechanical scours was identified early on as an effective form of self-medication.
Answer: FALSE
Location: "Dr Wrangham rightly guessed that the leaves had a medicinal purpose—this was, indeed, one of the earliest interpretations of a behaviour pattern as self-medication. However, he guessed wrong about what the mechanism was."
Explanation: The method was not immediately recognized as effective self-medication, and the initial theory about its medicinal purpose was wrong.
Self-medication behaviors in animals could have implications for improving human and livestock health.
Answer: TRUE
Location: "Dr Engel is now particularly excited about how knowledge of the way that animals look after themselves could be used to improve the health of livestock."
Explanation: Dr. Engel is excited about applying animal self-medication behaviors to improve human and livestock health.
In the past, researchers focused more on the types of chemicals in plants than on how animals physically expel harmful substances.
Answer: TRUE
Location: "He did so by watching what came out of the chimps, rather than concentrating on what went in."
Explanation: Dr. Huffman focused on the animals’ physical expulsion of harmful substances, which contrasted with the earlier focus on chemicals in plants.
