It is the biggest rainforest on Earth. A rainforest is a place with heavy annual rainfall and has a lot of foliage. Foliage is leaves. Do you know what rainforest this might be? The Amazon Rainforest is a dark dense place. It is very humid there. There are lots of animals that live there. Can you name one? Animals like sloths, monkeys and snakes live in the Amazon. The Amazon is in the Northwest and Southwest hemispheres. It is in South America. The Amazon is about 1.6 million square miles. That’s a lot! It is at about 0 degrees latitude, 15 degrees latitude, 45 degrees longitude and 75 degrees longitude.
The Amazon Rainforest is in Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Suriname, Guyana and French Guiana. 20 to 30 percent of the Amazon is gone as of right now. Deforestation is bad for the Amazon. Deforestation is the destruction of forests. We need the oxygen to live. The Amazon also has a river called the Amazon River, ironic enough. It is very muddy because of all the rain. People get around through canoe in the river, walking around, and people even build roads through the rainforest. They bould have to cut down trees to build roads. [deforestation] People majorly bring down the rainforest with pollution, cutting down trees, etc. The environment affects humans by giving us natural resources, like food and lumber. We also get many medicines from the Amazon.
Most of the Amazon is tropical wet. There is some tropical dry though. Climate is important to the Amazon. Climate is the normal weather conditions of an
area. It is warm and rainy there. Climate affects the Amazon because if there was no rain, some plants would not grow, and if that happened, some animals would not live. The average temperature of the Amazon is 77 degrees Fahrenheit. There is about 100 inches of rainfall a year in the Amazon Rainforest.
There are four layers of the rainforest. The forest floor is the bottom layer. It is very dark in the forest
floor. Few plants grow there and there is almost no sun. Jaguars and anteaters live there. Then there is the understory. It is right above the forest floor. Most of the plants hear have large leaves. Lots of bugs live here, along with redeyed tree frogs. Also, there is the canopy. It is above the understory. Most of the time, the leaves here are oval and come to a point. Lots of food grows here. You know what that means! Lots of animals like snakes, toucans and tree frogs. Last but not least, we have the emergent layer. It is the top layer of the rainforest. It is hot and windy here. Animals here are high in the sky, like harpy eagles, macaws, toucans and hummingbirds.
One of the animals that live in the Amazon Rainforest is the jaguar. It is goldenbrown with black spots. It also has a black nose and whiskers, also a tail. They live in South America mostly. It lives in the forest floor. They live in swampy places near rivers and lakes. But for a period of time, they are nomadic, or move from place to place instead of having a permanent home. Their predators, or organisms that kill them for food, are man and other jaguars in combat. An organism is a living thing. Its prey, or organisms it kills to eat, are tapirs, sloths and peccaries. This means it is a carnivore, or organism that eats only meat. A jaguar also has some adaptations, or a body feature or behavior that helps it survive in their environments. They are the sharp teeth to break the skull of its prey, and its strong muscles to help it run fast. Another type of animal that lives in the Amazon Rainforest is the green anaconda. It is green with black spots on top and yellow spots on bottom. It is the world’s largest snake. They are in the canopy layer. It is scary to think that there are snakes above your head. Sometimes you find them in swamps. Man is the only
predator. Their prey is fish, birds, tapirs, capybaras and sometimes jaguars. An adaptation would be that since it is so slow, it can go without food for over a year.
A tribe in the Amazon Rainforest is the Yanomami. The Yanomami Tribe is very interesting. They wear feathers and leaves as clothes. They eat monkeys, frogs, fruit, etc. Monkeys are edible! They believe in spirits. The Yanomami cremate the dead. The women wash vegetables in the river. They make seed to make food and condiments. The yanomami make juice and shampoo out of fruit from the Amazon. Also they live in houses made of trees, vines, leaves, etc. They are in real threat of disappearing.
Another tribe is the Tikuna Tribe. They live in tree houses. They make wax, rubber and gum out of the things they get from the rainforest. They mostly eat rice, flower, fruits and vegetables. Also they eat monkeys. The Tikuna Tribe has pets from the wild. That includes tapirs, monkeys, and on some occasions, even snakes. They believe in Christianity. They are hunters this is their culture, or way of life. They have tunics, piercings and tattoos. A tradition that the Tikuna Tribe has is that when a girl hits puberty, people rip her hair out.
A type of plant that grows in the Amazon Rainforest is the brazil nut. This nut is indeed very much edible. In fact, you may have actually eaten some before. They taste a little bitter. They are white on the inside, but has a brown skin. Brazil nuts are often round or crescent shaped. They grow in the nonflooding part of the Amazon. They grow in trees. The agouti, man, macaws and monkeys are all predators of the brazil nut. People use them for food and oil.
Then there is the orchid, a beautiful flower that grows in the Amazon Rainforest. They can be purple, pink, yellow, or even blue and red. There are some that are brown. These flowers grow on trees. Bugs and man are the only predators. Man doesn’t even eat them, so technically, only bugs are predators. We use them for enjoyment, decorations, fertilizer and in some cases, medicine.
Here is an Amazon food web.
Where it says omnivore, this means it eats meat and plants. When it says herbivore, this means it eats only plants. A producer makes its own food. The process of which
the producer makes its own food out of the suns energy is called photosynthesis. The decomposer breaks down the dead organisms for food.
You can help save the rainforest too! We did have a lot of the Amazon Rainforest. But now we only have 70 80 percent of that left. Try to use less paper towels and notebook paper. We have too much deforestation in the Amazon. You must help to conserve, or save, the Amazon Rainforest! Be a good eco tourist and do not mess up the rainforest. You should try to visit the Amazon Rainforest to learn more!
So think about it, the more paper you use, the more animal habitats you are destroying. The more animals that die, the more natives can’t live. It’s a huge chainreaction of humans destroying the rainforest. So next time someone says, “paper, or plastic?” Please think of the rainforest and say plastic.
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