21 Mar 2015

Self-medicating Monarchs

From This Way Up, 12:50 pm on 21 March 2015

Monarch
Photo: Kenneth Dwain Harrelson. (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Biologist Jaap de Roode from Emory University in the United States says a whole host of animals, from chimps to insects, use plants to self-medicate. He's discovered that Monarch butterflies are using milkweed plants, including swan plants, to treat their young.