Intl. J. of Mol. Evol. and Biodivers. 2014, Vol. 4, No. 2, 1-8
4
by Felipe et al., 2013, in Brazil. The number of
species used for medicinal purposes is not related to
the quantity of species available in the country, since
taxa with greater species richness in Ethiopia, such as
birds showed fewer species representation in
medicinal preparation. Similar trends have been
observed in Nigeria and South Africa (Simelane and
Kerley, 1998; Ngwenya, 2001)
Among the bird species used by the Kore as
traditional medicine, Thick-billed raven (
Corvus
crassirostris
) is endemic to Ethiopia. Other recorded
medicinal animal species are neither endemic to the
country nor found in the IUCN Red Data List.
Where rare and endangered species are concerned, the
use of biodiversity for traditional medicine can have
potentially signi
ficant impacts on global populations
that are already under pressure (Mander et al., 2007).
This implies that the traditional medicinal practices of
the study area could have little global effect due to the
fact that the recorded medicinal animal species are
commonly found in other places. However, the
practice could have negative impact on the local
population of the species. The high proportion
mammalian species could be attributed to the fact that
Carnivore diet (eating meat or animal part) is the
precursor of animal-based remedies for the treatment
of illness in the prehistoric human age (Nakanishi,
1999). Most of the medicinal animal species used by
the kore people also served as a source of food since
ancient time, and hence the people are well acquainted
with mammals than birds or reptiles.
2.2 Ailments treated, animal parts used and modes
of remedy preparations
Kore people use 21 animal species to prepare
remedies for 46 ailments. Different body parts were
used during preparation (Figure 1).
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%). The highest proportion of flesh in
traditional remedies preparation has been observed by
Sajem (2013) in Northeastern India. Stomach pain is
the most frequently reported ailments with a
frequency of 11.29% followed by wound (9.23%) and
rheumatism (5.81%). Alves and Rosa (2007) had
found that gastrointestinal (stomach) disease was one
of the most frequently quoted categories of ailments.
The high frequency of stomach pain is due to the
living style of the people in the rural area where there
is less access to clean water and people have low level
of understanding about personal hygiene (Dhawan and
Desai, 1996).
Traditional medicine practitioners used different
preparation techniques to make traditional remedies
(Figure 2). The techniques are grouped in to eight
categories (cooking, drying, cooking and powdering,
drying and powdering, fresh, heating, mixing and
powdering). These preparation techniques have been
reported by Yirga et al. (2011) with different
frequency. The highest number of informants (27.3%)
prepared the traditional remedies by cooking, 18% by
mixing and 15.8% by heating. Cooking refers to both
dry and wet cooking. Heating usually applies during
the treatment of ailments. Honey, blood and stomach
contents are frequently used to mix during
preparation.
Figure 1 Proportion of body parts used during preparation
Figure 2 Frequency of methods of preparation
