Socio-demographic characteristics of the respondents

Data on the socio-demographic attributes of the informants with respect to age, residence, sex, marital and educational status, as well as occupation are given in Table 4. During the field survey, 132 individuals (112 men and 20 women) were interviewed. Male respondents were in the majority, because most of the traditional medicinal treatment in the Kucha area was meted out by male practitioners. This kind of male dominance regarding traditional medicinal uses has also been reported from northern Ethiopia where mostly males took part in interviews, in questionnaires and group discussion [20]. Since 98% of the respondents were of the Gamo ethnic group, the conclusions are therefore based almost entirely on the views of the Gamo people.

Table 4 Socio-demographic characteristics of the informants

The majority of the informants (n = 54, 40.9%) were within the age range of 55–64; while, 32 (24.2%) were 45–54 years old and 12 (9%) were 35–44 years old. The majority of the interviewees lacked formal schooling due to the unavailability of modern education and the remoteness of educational institutions as well as fallacious traditional personal attitudes to sub-districts modern education. Of the total respondents, 75 were illiterate, and the remaining 57 had attended primary school and above. Most of the respondents (42.4%) were farmers who had a thorough understanding of ethno-medicine and 30.3% of them provided private traditional health services (Table 4). Almost all the informants were neither officially registered nor organized within the modern health service delivery systems in their communities.

Medicinal animals and animal parts/products used to treat human ailments

People of the study area collect different animal parts for the preparation of traditional drugs. Animals and their parts/products were found to be used for the treatment of around 35 different kinds of ailments including malaria, headache, rabies, anaemia, and cough. The animals were used either whole or provided parts or certain products, e.g., milk, blood, meat, teeth, honey, etc., (Table 5), to be used in treating a variety of ailments. With regard to the animal parts/products used for medicinal purposes, honey, milk, and butter were the most widely used products in the traditional medicinal armamentarium (26.9%), followed by meat and fat (21.2%). Whole body animal and external body parts were used in 9.6% of the cases and visceral organs such as liver, tongue, gastric content and bile were used in 7.7% of all cases. Excreta (stool and urine), bones and teeth as well as blood scored an identical acceptance level of 5.8%; while, larvae (3.8%) and saliva as well as sweat (3.8%) were the least favoured medicinal material (Table 5).

Table 5 Animal parts or products used as traditional medicine in the study area (52 in total)

Findings from Ethiopia [5, 13, 15], as well as from Brazil [3, 8], and India [9,10,11, 14] had revealed that the two animal products most commonly used in addition to the aforementioned animal parts, were meat and fat (18%–27.5%, respectively). In the Wolayta district of southern Ethiopia 21.1% of the animal-based medicinal remedies were prepared from animal products such as honey, milk, butter, cheese, and eggs [25], but for the inhabitants of Assam in India it could be shown that the use of whole animals in treating ailments was with 44.9% the major method, followed by using what was then referred to by the authors as “animals parts such as meat” (22.5%). The differences between the results obtained by different investigators could, of course, reflect different healing approaches, but it could also be a consequence of dissimilar interpretations or definitions what constitutes an animal part and what is considered an animal product.

Indigenous knowledge with regard to preparation method

The local community employed various methods of preparation of traditional medicines for different types of ailments (Table 6). Direct use as with the consumption of raw or fresh material, drying, powdering and mixing with other ingredients, preparing soups and stews, were some of the most common preparation methods used in treating humans suffering from a medical condition. The principal methods for the preparation of the animal parts or products included in a remedy were, apart from the direct raw or fresh use of the material (50%), drying (11.5%) and cooking a soup or a strew (7.7%). Investigators from different parts of the world had also reported that the most popular methods in their studies on the preparation of a traditional remedy to fight a disorder had also been based on the consumption of some fresh material of the animal [5, 13,14,15, 27]. Therefore it seems that the raw consumption of animals or animal parts as part of the therapeutic process is a common practice among various ethnic communities worldwide [4, 13, 16, 21, 28].

Table 6 Methods used in preparing animal-based medicines (53 in total)Indigenous knowledge on the mode of application

This study showed that modes of application/administration of the traditional medicines varied depending on the part/product of the animal used and the type of the ailment condition to be treated (Table 7). The routes of administration of these medications are eating, drinking, anointing, attaching, dropping, holding, exposure to fumigation, banding and inhalation. For instance, both solid and liquid remedies were administered orally if applicable, otherwise they were applied to the skin by tying, rubbing, massaging, anointing, and fumigation to allow the potent components of the medicine to enter the body. In the study area, oral (54.2%) is the dominant route of administration followed by the dermal (39.6%) application. This result is in line with various studies in Ethiopia and other countries [5, 14,15,16,17, 27]. The authors of these papers all reported that the major way of administration, i.e., 33.8–88.1% (depending on area and tribe), was oral ingestion. On the other hand, that conclusion is not in agreement with a recent survey from the Arba Minch Gamo Zone in Ethiopia that showed that the highest route of administration was dermal, accounting for 50 percent [13].

Table 7 Major methods (routes) of traditional medicine administration and delivery (48 in total)Views on how to share and transfer knowledge on medicinal animals

The local community exploits their shared traditional knowledge to manage health problems at home by using different animals and their parts/products found around them before looking for other options regardless of the type of health problem and its intensity. According to the informants of the study area, their preference for traditional medicine was because of the lack of substitutes for some of the diseases in the modern healthcare services. For example, diseases believed to be caused by the urine of a bat, not only are easy to access but also cost little.

The majority of the informants 36 (27.3%) obtained their knowledge on the use of the medicinal animals and their parts/products from their father (Table 7). About 98 (74.2%) of the informants were interested to transfer their medicinal knowledge to the next generation. Similarly, it was reported that most of the people of Motta City’s administration and the Hulet Eju Enessie District were interested to transfer their medicinal knowledge to the next generation [5]. Most of the informants 128 (96.9%) stated that traditional medicinal services were accepted by the local community. This indicated that conventional medicines are still considered useful and important, especially for the poor who have little access to modern medicines and do not have the money to pay for expensive drugs and often do not trust them. A rather similar conclusion was reached for other Ethiopian [5, 13, 15, 27] and Tanzanian tribals in Africa [29] (Table 8).

Table 8 Indigenous knowledge transfer practiceMedicinal animal of the region: species diversity

The present study revealed a wealth of knowledge on the use of traditional animal-based medicines in treating many types of ailments by the inhabitants of Kucha District, Southern Ethiopia. A total of 24 medicinal animal species were recognized by the local community. Regarding the classes of the medicinal animals, mammals were represented by the highest number of species (13 = 54.2%), followed by birds with five reported species (20.8%). Arthropods were represented with four species (16.7%) and reptiles and fish contained one species each (4.2%) (Table 9). Amphibians and invertebrates other than arthropods were not mentioned. This result agrees with the information obtained from FGD participants and findings from several studies in Ethiopia and other countries, which also reported mammals with 12–27 species being the dominant source of medicinal animals [5, 8,9,10,11,12,13, 27,28,29]. This outcome demonstrates that the interviewed people of the Kucha district have therapeutic uses for only a relatively small number but taxonomically rather wide range of diverse species of animals to treat diseases and bodily malfunctions. The findings indicated that the local people over a wide area in Ethiopia show a tendency to use the same medicinal animals and this can be an indicator of the genuine therapeutic value of these animals as well as the sharing of the indigenous knowledge on therapies.

Table 9 Major animal groups and number of species used in the traditional medicine (24 in total)Assessing a medicinal animal’s condition

The local healers of the study area employ several criteria to assess an animal’s condition (Table 10). Thirty eight (73.1%) preparations are made from fresh material, followed by dry 10 (19.2%) and both dry and fresh condition 4 (7.7%). Findings that were previously reported from various areas of Ethiopia and several other countries also indicated that 39.9%-56.6% of the medicinal animals were used in their fresh state [5, 13, 15, 20] but for the tribals of the Pachamalai hills of Tamil Nadu, India [28] and the Sukuma tribe of the Busega district in North-western Tanzania it has been reported that the dry condition (47.83%) was dominant [29]. This difference in the medicinal animals’ condition may be linked to differences in the socio-cultural beliefs that the animals are held in and the practices of the healers in the various tribal regions.

Table 10 Preferred condition of the medicinal animal and/or animal productTraditional medicinal animal preservation methods and use of additives

According to ten knowledgeable healers (key informants) the five most common preservation methods are: wrapping in cloth sheet, hanging under the roof, storing in a plastic bag, keeping the material in a clay container, and storage in sealed bottles. The use of cloth sheet was ranked as number one by traditional practitioners for the preservation of medicinal animals followed by roof hanging, plastic bags, clay containers, and sealed bottles (Table 11). According to the discussions with the healers, the preparations were made from mixtures of different animal species with different substances added such as water, butter, honey, oil with spices and garlic. However, there were cases in which such additives were not used. The extra substances have a double function, e.g., to improve the flavor of a potion and to reduce adverse effects such as vomiting and diarrhea, and to enhance the efficacy and healing conditions, as reported by focus group discussion participants.

Table 11 Ranking by 10 key informants of the preferred preservation method of the medicinal animal and/or animal part (use values: 4 = best, 3 = very good, 2 = good and 1 = less used)Medicinal animal popularity in the community and bio-cultural value of a species

Faunal resources have played a wide range of roles in the study area. Other than for medicinal purposes, Kucha people also used animal resources for various other aspects in their daily life. The Kucha people use slough (molted skin of various animals) or animal skins for clothes worn during mourning and celebrations, for making drums and protecting musical instruments or tableware, etc. (Figs. 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11). Same animals or their parts may be used to decorate traditional houses, which once again are uses that have also been reported from other tribes in Ethiopia as well as other countries [3, 29]. Similarly, it has been documented that various tribal groups sacrifice animals in connection with a variety of rituals and that they may be turned into a variety of traditional tools [1, 14, 15, 17].

Fig. 5Fig. 6

Animal fur as traditional cape

Fig. 7

Animal skin as part of a chair

Fig. 8Fig. 9

Bone spoon for porridge (mokae)

Fig. 10

Musical instrument made of animal horn

Fig. 11

Various animal products are used as decorations and auxiliaries by the Kucha people during celebrations

Relative frequency of citation

The Relative frequency of citation (RFC) index was calculated to determine the local importance of each species (Table 12). The most cited animal species were: the cow (RFC = 1.0), the chicken (RFC = 0.7), the human, the goat and different sweat bee species with an RFC = 0.6, honey bee (RFC = 0.5) porcupine and hyena with an RFC = 0.3, and domestic cat and fishes with an RFC = 0.2). The leopard scored the lowest value (RFC = 0.1); while, the highest RFC index of the cows demonstrates the importance of this species as a source of medicines. However, if animal species scored low RFC values like, for instance, the leopard, this does not necessarily mean that they are not important locally. It may be that most of the respondents were not aware of the species’ therapeutic potential or that the species was so rare that it was rarely used. However, vertebrates do appear to be the main source of animal-derived medicines not just in Ethiopia [5, 13, 22] but also in South America [2, 3, 8], Africa [4, 26, 29], India [9,