Saturday 7 January 2017

Toronto Zoo and Orangutan Earwax - Too good to skip

From a US health and medicine website comes this gem in Statnews on the dangers of poking at earwax:
"Ear canal cleaning is a hard habit to kick. It may be as innate as tool use itself. (Dr. Vito) Forte was once called to the Toronto Zoo to treat an orangutan that seemed to be having ear trouble — and found out that the ape was known to pick up secondhand wads of chewing gum, check them for stickiness, and then use them to extract whatever might have been buried in its ears."
Picture source 

The article also cites a survey of a teaching hospital that found over 90% of the health professionals there admitted sticking objects into their ears to get at wax.

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