Intl. J. of Mol. Evol. and Biodivers. 2014, Vol. 4, No. 2, 1-8
3
2007).
Age (above 30 years), years of previous stay in the
area (above 10 years) and history of traditional
medicine practitioners (who involve in preparation)
were used as criteria of selecting people for
semi-structure interview. A total of 90 people were
interviewed from 15 kebeles. 25% of the respondents
were female and 75% were male respondents.
Photographic pictures of animals used in traditional
medicine preparation were taken for further
verification of species identification.
Questioners were also randomly distributed among
selected government employees working in different
offices. The selected offices were woreda health office,
woreda agricultural office and woreda administrative
office. The main purposes of these questioners were to
assess the knowledge, access and experience of these
segments of the society regarding the use of
zootherapy. A total of 60 people (90% male and 10%
female) were interviewed using semi-structured
questionnaire.
1.4 Data analyses
Descriptive statistics for analysis of qualitative data
and inferential statistics for analysis of quantitative
data were used. One sample t-test to compare sample
and population means of quantitative data of single
population, and 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.
The FL quantifies the importance of a species for a
given purpose. It refers to the percentage of
informants claiming the use of a certain animal
species for the same major purpose, was calculated for
the most frequently reported diseases or ailments as:
FL=I
p
/I
u
* 100%
Where I
p
is the number of informants that claim a use
of animal species to treat a particular disease, I
u
is the
total number of informants that use the species as a
medicine to treat any given disease (Friedman, 1986).
Relative Importance (RI) value, a measure of diversity
of medicinal application, was computed for each
claimed medicinal animals using the formula RI = NP
+NCS. NP is calculated by dividing the number of
properties (in this case, specific ailments treated)
attributed to a species divided by the total number of
properties attributed to the most versatile species
(species with the highest number of properties). NCS
is computed by dividing the number of body systems
(ailment categories) treated by a given species by the
total number of body systems treated by the most
versatile species. The highest possible RI value for a
given species is 2.
2 Results and Discussion
2.1. Medicinal Animals
The study revealed that a total of 21 wild animal
species were used by the kore people for traditional
medicinal practices (Table 1). Out of the 21 species,
14 (66.64%) are mammals, 3 (14.28%) are reptiles
and 4 (19.04%) are birds.
Table 1 List of medicinal animal species recorded in the study
area
Common name
Scientific name
Lizard (Skinks)
Aardvark
African civet
African rock python
Black backed jackal
Burchell's zebra
Bushpig
Common duicker
Common mole rat
Crested porcupine
Hare
Klipspringer
Leopard tortoise
Mourning dove
Ostrich
Rabbit
Thick billed raven
Vervet monkey
Vesper bats
Warthog
Yellow-billed oxpecker
Scincidae (family)
Orycteropus afer
Civettictis civetta
Python sebae
Canis mesomelas
Equus quagga burchellii
Potamochoerus larvatus
Sylvicapra grimmia
Cryptomys hottentotus
Hystrix cristata
Lepus (genus)
Oreotragus oreotragus
Stigmochelys pardalis
Zenaida macroura
Struthio camelus
Leporidae (family)
Corvus crassirostris
Chlorocebus pygerythrus
Vespertilionidae (family)
Phacochoerus africanus
Buphagus africanus
Other researchers in different countries have identified
equivalent number of vertebrate species used for
traditional medicine (El-Kamali, 2000; Alves et al.,
2010; 2012). The highest proportion of mammalian
species in zootherapeutic activity was also observed
