Kenya's Elephants Are Running Their Own Forest Pharmacy, Study Finds

Nature's Most Unlikely Pharmacists

African elephants in Kenya's Mount Elgon region are using dozens of different medicinal plants to treat themselves and their families when they are sick — and a remarkable new study suggests they may even be preparing and administering those treatments to their young. The finding is based on observations of Mount Elgon's cave elephants in western Kenya and appears to represent a level of sophisticated self-medication among animals that has not previously been documented.

The study presents and discusses first-hand accounts from eight local experts from the Sabaot indigenous community, including wildlife community scouts, a retired ranger, and elders, all of whom have witnessed local elephants selectively consuming materials — such as plants — they believe aid in the treatment and prevention of medical disorders. The study, published in the journal Scientific Reports, did not name the interviewees — keeping participants anonymous so they felt free to share their stories.

A Medicine Cabinet Hidden in the Forest

For the first time in African elephants in the region, researchers report the potential medicinal use of 35 plant species from 23 families, along with four types of soils, minerals, or clays. Many of the plants the elephants eat have established roles in Indigenous traditional medicine and have been scientifically verified as having antibacterial, anti-inflammatory, or antiparasitic properties. The study also notes that earlier reports from Kenya documented pregnant elephants consuming Boraginaceae family leaves to bring on labour and ease postpartum symptoms.

Perhaps the most striking discovery involves how mothers care for their calves. Mother elephants living around Mount Elgon were seen chewing specific roots and leaves, then mixing the resulting mixture with their breast milk to feed their young. The study documents what appears to be the first known instance of a non-human species both creating and administering medicine to others of its kind — while self-medication has long been recorded among species such as great apes, no animal other than humans had previously been seen preparing treatments for members of its own species.

A Two-Way Street Between Elephants and Humans

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. But this new research adds a stunning new dimension to their already remarkable reputation. Consistent with past research on elephant zoopharmacognosy, informants conveyed the belief that humans and elephants engage in multidirectional, interspecies knowledge transmission — one participant described how an elephant observed his own medicinal use of the species Rhamnus prinoides, finding the next day that "the elephants had consumed the plant as well."

Researchers noted that many of the local healers they spoke to had discovered medicines by watching the elephants — and that there is a knowledge interchange, with people learning from animals, and a chance that animals are also learning from people. The field studying this phenomenon — zoopharmacognosy — places elephants alongside chimpanzees, bottlenose dolphins, certain birds, and insects as animals known to seek out natural remedies.

What Deforestation Could Cost Everyone

One of the lead researchers, Dr. Elodie Freymann from Brown University, said the study raised the question of whether destruction of forest habitat deprives animals — and humans — of the medicines they need to thrive. The researchers said the findings also highlight concerns over habitat loss in Mount Elgon, warning that continued forest destruction could limit elephants' access to plants they may rely on when they are sick.

The implications stretch far beyond wildlife conservation. If elephants have spent centuries identifying plants with genuine therapeutic value — and if humans have quietly learned from them — then every acre of forest lost is potentially a page torn from a medical textbook that neither species has fully read yet. The study is a powerful reminder that some of the world's most important pharmacological knowledge may still be roaming on four legs through the forests of Kenya.