Zoopharmacognosy can promote scientific research initiatives and offers an unconventional source in natural drug discovery.

Zoopharmacognosy offers a great opportunity to learn from the natural world and gain invaluable insight into the multifunctional bioactivity of plant secondary metabolites that could provide crucial breakthroughs in a variety of scientific disciplines.

An understanding and appreciation of the potential in zoopharmacognosy research and exploration has yet to achieve its full potential. Its concepts can provide insight and a unique perspective for a wide range of end-users and offers a platform for the acquisition, analysis and dissemination of traditional botanical sources with therapeutic properties and is already supported by the sharing of indigenous medicinal plant practices and knowledge.

Although mainstream medical science doesn’t like being out-performed by ancient natural remedies the fact remains that many of our natural medicine has historically derived from animal self medication behavior of wild and free roaming animals, however, research in zoopharmacognosy behavior has already resulted in the discovery of botanical compounds that are bioactive.

Pharmaceutical research may benefit from the clues given by the interaction of animals and aromatic compounds. The identification of novel compounds and new research initiatives can easily derive from these natural resources. A natural resource may be more cost-effective and therefore more relevant in the current economic climate of expensive synthetic drug development.

With climate change upon us, animals adapting to new plant sources to meet their medicinal needs may benefit human health also, as their choices can inform the development of new drugs. Zoopharmacognosy investigations can offer clues in identifying new compound sources.

Zoopharmacognosy impacts and intersects with numerous scientific disciplines and requires multidisciplinary input for further research and investigation, to reach a clearer understanding of animal-plant associations for healthy maintenance and disease control, and how this may be applied and used constructively to our ever changing and unpredictable environment, in the preservation of our disappearing wildlife, supporting indigenous medicinal knowledge and may serve to identify new sources of bioactive compounds for generating new research initiatives.

However, the current research is only a fraction of what is possible. Animal behaviors are often misinterpreted, which can undermine the expansion of successful research. This approach to therapeutic discovery for human health, based on the evolutionary adaptations of animals can be extremely constructive. Therefore, the importance of animal self-medication should not be overlooked, and may provide a more natural and cost-effective approach to human drug development.