SCIENCE LAB SCENICS : HEALING POWERS

Healing Powers : Why chimps bounce back more quickly than humans.

WATCHING wild baboons in Kenya, Akiko Matsumoto-Oda, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Ryukyus in Japan, had a front-row seat to the violence between these monkeys, especially the males :

'' I was struck how frequently they sustained injuries,'' she said, '' and, even more, by how they recovered.''

In a study published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, Dr. Matsumoto-Oda's team compared the healing rates of human, chimpanzees, monkeys and mice.

They found that human wounds took more than twice as long to heal as wounds of any of the other mammals.

Our slow healing may be a result of an evolutionary tradeoff we made long ago, when we shed fur in favor of naked, sweaty skin that keeps us cool.

The researchers wanted to study healing in a way that was less violent and more controlled than watching wild baboons.

To measure human healing, they recruited 24 patients who were having skin tumors removed at the  University of the Ryukyus Hospital.

To gather data on chimpanzees, which are some of the closest animal relatives, researchers observed five captive chimps at the Kumamoto Sanctuary in Japan.

The chimps' wounds like those of wild baboons, mostly came from tiffs between animals.

The World Students Society thanks  Elizabeth Preston.