Recent reports on animal self medication strategies have created a lot of interest and scientists assert that understanding the process has significant implications for humans. While initially it was viewed as a potential source for newer drugs, today it is a rapidly expanding subject relating to animal, environmental and human health care needs. Hence, it is of interest to pharmacologists, veterinarians, ethnobotanists, pharmacists, environmentalists and conservationists. Zoopharmacognosy has opened the option of giving animals in our care the opportunity to select their diet from an offered range of plant remedies. It has especially opened up to the world the apparent ability of the animals to show a cognitive grasp of potential medicines in their environment.

Anecdotal observations of animal ways of health maintenance are revealing the significance of several facts of animal and plant life, some of which were long known in traditional knowledge.

• The underlying principles of animal health maintenance suggest a holistic approach of avoidance, prevention and treatment of diseases. Modern medicine’s expectation of conquering disease with pathogen-targeted antibiotics and receptor-binding pure chemicals is a reductionistic approach to health care.
• The active self-help strategies that seem to support the health of animals in wild are not idealizations of nature. They have emerged as the most successful through the test of natural selection.
• An important lesson to be learnt from wild health is that disease avoidance is the result of constant vigilance rather than the resorting to magic bullets after succumbing to it.
• Eating the right foods and natural medicines is based on the animals’ body needs and its sensitivity to subtle changes in appetite. The shift of focus for health maintenance, seems to be-eating in accordance with the body’s cravings rather than tongue cravings. An intentional role in taking preventive steps before disease sets in seems to be the crux of the matter.
• Scientific experimentation on animal ageing is revealing that life span can be extended by restricting calories intake and that dietary modification is the key to successful ageing.
• All this “newer” information appears to reaffirm the wholistic approach of traditional medical knowledge. Frugality in diet, physical agility and right attitude towards life were considered essential for healthy living in Indian traditional medicine.
• Plant secondary metabolite production is considered to be an evolutionary adaptation of plant defense mechanism. They vary in their proportion in plants according to herbivory and other environmental changes. Tropical plants have a more complex array of secondary metabolites than temperate climate plants. Nature possibly intended to provide better chemical weapons against greater predation in the tropics.
• Traditional medicine dictum of collection of medicinal plant parts and secretions during specific lunar cycles (optimum chemical composition—right medicinal effect) can no longer be said to be a superstitious practice
• Animal pattern of consumption of plants—edible, moderately toxic and toxic appears to be based on the following generalizations:
  • Toxic plants are consumed in moderation, when excess is lethal
  • Some selected plants are consumed at certain times of the year
  • Some specific plants are safe when first eaten, but not for prolonged feeding
  • Some plants are safe after processing or preparation
  • Some plants are safe when taken in combination with others
• From reported evidence, primates and carnivores are using plants for the value of their secondary compounds. Scientists suggest that other mammalian species may be using similar strategies. This phenomenon of innate knowledge of health sustenance could be universal to all life forms.
• It is being realized that all of life is linked at a very basic level with each life form perceiving it in different ways. In many traditional societies, animal behavior was used to forecast changes in the weather or warn of impending natural disasters, thus benefiting from their different sensory perception. Today it is a fact that fish like salmon are very sensitive to minute changes in water chemistry. They do not swim up in rivers polluted with copper or zinc mining.
• Each living organism appears to be bestowed with the needed cognition to sustain its life by dynamically interacting with its environment.
• In the context of zoo phamacognosy, if animals are able to identify the needed medicinal material from their environment, much evolved Homo sapiens—man, is a much greater potential in terms of innate awareness of life and its intricacies.
• Much the same way as domestic animals lose their ability to detect toxins, civilization and industrialization could have taken a toll on the depth of innate human knowing.
• To the risk of “evidence-based knowledge” calling it as unjustified generalization, it may be surmised that realization of this innate life knowledge (which includes life-sustaining health strategies)—the science of life, was being symbolically referred to as “revealed by Gods” in ancient Indian tradition.
• Science with its methods seems to be coming back a full circle to accepting this primeval fount of knowing within.