NORTH-WESTERN JOURNAL OF ZOOLOGY 9 (2): 383-398 ©NwjZ, Oradea, Romania, 2013 Article No.: 131705 http://biozoojournals.3x.ro/nwjz/index.html Folk knowledge of non-domestic mammals among ethnic Hungarians in North-Western Romania Viktor ULICSNI1,*, Ingvar SVANBERG2 and Zsolt MOLNÁR3 1. Department of Ecology, Faculty of Science and Informatics of the University of Szeged, 6726 Szeged, Közép fasor 52, Hungary. 2. Uppsala Centre for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Uppsala Univerisity, Box 514, 751 20 Uppsala, Sweden. 3. Centre for Ecological Research, Institute of Ecology and Botany, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, 2163 Vácrátót, Hungary. * Correspnding author, V. Ulicsni, E-mail:
[email protected] Received: 07. February 2013 / Accepted: 04. April 2013 / Available online: 06. June 2013 / Printed: December 2013 Abstract. Most ethnobiological research on mammals has focused on the domesticated species and largely ignored the wild taxa. We carried out a research among the ethnic Hungarians in Nuşfalău, Romania, to document the local ecological knowledge on mammals. We studied which kinds of local wild mammals the villagers know, which folk taxa they can identify, the names they use for these taxa, and what do they know about the morphological, behavioural and ecological characteristics, as well as the economical impact of these mammals. Twenty persons were interviewed with the aid of colour photographs of 62 mammal species. Five hundred and twenty three individual data on the various folk taxa were thus gathered. The majority of the interviewees were still possessed surprisingly detailed and precise knowledge on the wild species living in their surroundings. They classified the 62 mammal species into 42 folk taxa and grouped them into 11 larger sets.