{"id":26827,"date":"2025-04-29T23:01:04","date_gmt":"2025-04-29T23:01:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=26827"},"modified":"2025-04-29T23:23:10","modified_gmt":"2025-04-29T23:23:10","slug":"humans-wounds-heal-much-more-slowly-than-other-mammals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=26827","title":{"rendered":"Humans\u2019 Wounds Heal Much More Slowly Than Other Mammals\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
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We naked apes need Band-Aids, but shedding the fur that speeds healing in other mammals may have helped us evolve other abilities.<\/p>\n

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Watching wild baboons in Kenya, Akiko Matsumoto-Oda, an evolutionary biologist and primatologist at the University of the Ryukyus in Japan, had a front-row seat to the violence between these monkeys, especially the males.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was struck by how frequently they sustained injuries,\u201d she said, \u201cand, even more, by how rapidly they recovered \u2014 even from seemingly severe wounds.\u201d<\/p>\n

Compared with her own experiences with nicks and cuts, the baboons\u2019 ability to heal seemed like a superpower.<\/p>\n

In a study<\/a> published on Wednesday in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, Dr. Matsumoto-Oda and her colleagues compared the healing rates of humans, 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 trade-off we made long ago, when we shed fur in favor of naked, sweaty skin that keeps us cool.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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When possible, the researchers wanted to study healing in a way that was less violent and more controlled than watching wild baboons.<\/p>\n

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 our closest animal relatives, researchers observed five captive chimps at the Kumamoto Sanctuary of the Kyoto University Wildlife Research Center, which houses animals formerly used in pharmaceutical research. The chimps\u2019 wounds, like those of wild baboons, mostly came from tiffs between the animals.<\/p>\n

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We naked apes need Band-Aids, but shedding the fur that speeds healing in other mammals may have helped us evolve other abilities.Watching wild baboons in Kenya, Akiko Matsumoto-Oda, an evolutionary biologist and primatologist at the University of the Ryukyus in Japan, had a front-row seat to the violence between these monkeys, especially the males.\u201cI was struck by how frequently they sustained injuries,\u201d she said, \u201cand, even more, by how rapidly they recovered \u2014 even from seemingly severe wounds.\u201dCompared with her own experiences with nicks and cuts, the baboons\u2019 ability to heal seemed like a superpower.In a study published on Wednesday in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, Dr. Matsumoto-Oda and her colleagues compared the healing rates of humans, 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 trade-off we made long ago, when we shed fur in favor of naked, sweaty skin that keeps us cool.When possible, 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 our closest animal relatives, researchers observed five captive chimps at the Kumamoto Sanctuary of the Kyoto University Wildlife Research Center, which houses animals formerly used in pharmaceutical research. The chimps\u2019 wounds, like those of wild baboons, mostly came from tiffs between the animals.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26829,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26827","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lifestyle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26827","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26827"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26827\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26830,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26827\/revisions\/26830"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/26829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}