Dereje W. Yohannes , Meseret Chane

Department of Biology, College of Natural and Computational Sciences, Dilla University, Ethiopia
Author    Correspondence author
International Journal of Molecular Evolution and Biodiversity, 2014, Vol. 4, No. 2   doi: 10.5376/ijmeb.2014.04.0002
Received: 10 Oct., 2014    Accepted: 14 Nov., 2014    Published: 30 Dec., 2014

This is an open access article published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Dereje and Chane, 2014, Ethnozoological Study of Traditional Medicinal Animals Used by the Kore People in Amaro Woreda, Southern Ethiopia, International Journal of Molecular Evolution and Biodiversity, Vol.4, No.2, 1-9 (doi: 10.5376/ijmeb.2014.04.0002)

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). The mean number of species used by male informants was 5.6 + 1.15 and by female informants was 2.6 + 0.73. Next to python, warthog has the highest RI index (0.8942) followed by crested porcupine (0.789) and bushpig (0.6838).  Species which have a FL of 100 for the most frequently reported ailments are Crested porcupine, Hare, Klipspringer, Leopard tortoise, Mourning dove and Rabbit. There was a significant association between academic status and knowledge of zoonotic diseases. The association was significant (P value < 0.05). From the total population of urban informants (government office employees), 37 (30 male and 7 female) (61.7%) individuals used traditional medicine and the rest 23 (38.3%) (21 male and 2 female) do not used traditional medicine. Chi-Square Test revealed that there is no significant relationship between sex and use of traditional medicine (p>0.05).

Zootherapy; Ailments; Animal products; Traditional remedies; Amaro woreda