The Importance Of Taboos Of Animals

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3.5.3: Animals.
Animals were very important to the Sengwer people because they formed the main source of their livelihood as they depended on animals for hunting, and exchanged with the neighboring communities meat with other products. To ensure that hunting should not cause extinction of animals resources within the forest they had taboos that helped in conservations of animals species found within the forest.
It was a taboo for the Sengwer people to hunt or kill a pregnant animal. They prohibited this because by killing the pregnant animals, they will have cut short the lives of future generations of that particular animal. By mistake a pregnant animal was injured they would take care of that animal and treat it until it got healed.
There were animals which were feared and viewed to be a sign of bad luck. This belief helped them in conserving wild animals found in Embobut forest .A certain type of gazelle Cheptringich was viewed as a bad animal and represented bad luck. Whenever that animal crossed the path as they went for hunting they will cut short the journey it meant that but things might befall them. …show more content…

3.5.4 Snakes
The Sengwer people also had taboos in relation to snakes and this helped in conserving different species of snakes in the forest. For instance a large snake found in a cave represented the spirit and therefore they were supposed to treat it well and not harm the snake to avoid the spirits getting angry.
They also believed in incarnation, they believed that people who died long time ago can come back in form of a snake therefore large snake species such as Python were not allowed to be killed since they may be representing ancestors(Talam