Ethnozoological Study of Traditional Medicinal Animals Used by the Kore People in Amaro Woreda, Southern Ethiopia

Abstract

A total of 90 people (practitioners) were interviewed from 15 kebeles. 25% of the respondents were female and 75% were male respondents. Questioners were also randomly distributed among selected government employees working in different offices. A total of 60 people (90% male and 10% female) were interviewed using semi-structured questionnaire. Independent samples t-test to compare means of quantitative data between male and female informants were computed using SPSS version 20. Chi-square test was computed to see the significance of relationship between qualitative data. Fidelity Level (FL) and Relative Importance (RI) value were used to analyze species preference and importance. A total of 21 animal species were used to prepare remedies for 46 ailments; 14 (66.64%) were mammals, 3 (14.28%) were reptiles and 4 (19.04%) were birds. Among the different animal body parts used for remedial preparation, flesh has the highest proportion (33.8%), followed by fat (11.5 %), bone (8.6%) and blood (8.6%). Stomach pain is the most frequently reported ailments with a frequency of 11.29% followed by wound (9.23%) and rheumatism (5.81%). The highest number of informants (27.3%) prepared the traditional remedies by cooking, 18% by mixing and 15.8% by heating. The large proportions of the drug (69.8%) are administered orally, 21.6% dermal, nasal (7.2%) and ear canal (1.4%). The study revealed that there is significant variation in the mean number of species used by male and female informant ( p 0.05).