Introduction
Since ancient times human beings are aware of ethnobiological uses and depend on fauna and flora for their medicines, food, clothing, and other resources of living (Lohani et al., 2008). About 170 member states (88%) of the World Health Organization (WHO) claimed to use complementary and alternative medicines in 2018 (WHO, 2019). Approximately, 65% of the world population relies on alternative medicines derived from natural resources for their primary health care Cragg and Newman (2013) as these are comprised of different bioactive compounds which may be more effective with the least toxicity as compared to synthetic drugs (Oudhia, 1995; Alves and Rosa, 2005). Traditional Chinese medicines, comprising more than 1,500 animal species, Unani medicine consists of about 500 species of invertebrates, while Ayurvedic system of medicine also depends on animal species and their products along with medicinal flora that denotes the importance of fauna and flora in healing ailments (Oudhia, 1995; Tripathy, 1995; Alves and Rosa, 2005).
Pakistan hosts remarkable biodiversity of both fauna and flora Ali (1998), Khan (2004), Mirza and Wasiq, (2007) where most medicines are of plant origin. Tibb-e Islami Dawa Khana (herbal drug markets) reported 600 plant species, general practitioners and tabibs (GPs of Unani medicine) used about 50,000 species of plants, and many unlicensed health practitioners spread in remote hilly and rural areas of Pakistan are using more than 200 plant species in crude drug preparation (Umair et al., 2019). Rural people, who have century’s old traditional knowledge transferred from their ancestors and propagated from generation to generation, play a vital role in disease management. They heavily depend on this knowledge of the traditional system due to poverty, and lack of modern medical facilities, so this information is restricted to rural areas (Sandhya et al., 2006; Ibrar et al., 2007).
The uses of plants as alternative medicine are very common and almost documented both in monoherbal and polyherbal forms in the study area Adnan et al. (2014a), Mussarat et al. (2014), Adnan et al. (2018), Malik et al. (2018), Mussarat et al. (2021) however, only a few reports are available on animal uses from Pakistan (Arshad et al., 2014; Ali et al., 2017; Altaf et al., 2017; Altaf et al., 2018; Shams et al., 2019; Altaf et al., 2020; Ahmad et al., 2021). The documentation of floral and faunal traditional recipes is indispensable before its depletion due to increasing urbanization, modernization, and industrialization. It is essential to report the traditional knowledge regarding plant and animal uses of individual human communities in unexplored regions. Moreover, with the increasing challenge of microorganisms’ resistance against existed allopathic medicines, there is a dire need to check new combinations of natural constituents with additive and synergistic effects. Therefore, the study has been planned with the objectives to document 1) recipes comprised of animals, animal parts, or animal products 2) recipes comprised of both plant and animal parts/products used by the residents of the southern region of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan, and 3) the highly preferred recipes by quantitative indices. This is may be the first time reported study in the selected area to document traditionally used medicinal animal species and animal-plant recipes. The results of the study may be helpful in the conservation of traditional knowledge and identification of new species as a potential source of alternative and complementary medicine.