Where in the amazon would you most likely find jaguars?
Is it true that Brazil has no restrictions or quarantines on bringing in animals?
What animals live in the canopy layer of the rain forest, and what foods do they eat?
What type of soil is found in the rain forest? What is the light intensity of the rain forest?
What kinds of monkeys live in the rainforest?
Are the frogs really poisonous?
Do you have owls in the Amazon forest?
What are some of the kinds of trees located in the amazon rain forest?
How much rain falls in the Amazon?
Why does fruit taste sweet but it is healthy?
What is the food chain in the amazon rainforest?
Why are people cutting down the rainforest? Don't people care about the animals they ruin?
How many animals are there in the rain forest?
How many different types of tree are there in the rain forest?
What kinds of food are common in the Rio Negro area?
What is Amazônia?
Why is it a fun quest?
Where is Amazônia?
Where did the name Amazon come from?
Why is the rain forest wet?
Why are there naked people on your Web site?

Where in the amazon would you most likely find jaguars?
Ravon, age =>15
Ballarat, VIC, Australia

The answer is: everywhere in the amazon.

The jaguar (Panthera onca) is the largest member of the cat family in the Americas. Its range includes all of Central America as well as large parts of South America and the southern parts of North America. It is a very adaptable hunter living in habitats as diverse as the tropical rain forest and tropical savanna and grasslands. They will even live in open country if there is a good source of water and sufficient cover for hunting.

The Amazon region has the highest population of jaguars both because of the favorable habitat, and because of the relative scarcity of humans, their biggest predator. Unlike some cats, they like the water and are common near rivers, streams and lagoons feeding on fish, frogs, turtles and small alligators. As humans move deeper into the jungle, encounters with the big cat become more frequent. The native people of the forest respect the jaguar for its beauty and strength and there are many folktales starring this jungle cat. <return to top>

Is it true that Brazil has no restrictions or quarantines on bringing in animals?
Emily, age 9
Hilo, HI

No, that's not true. Brazil has restrictions similar to other countries which are designed to prevent the spread of disease and non-native species.

The following is quoted from the Brazilian Embassy's Web site:
"Plants and Pets: Plants and pets (dogs, cats, birds) may enter Brazil only upon presentation of the following documents, duly authenticated by the Consular Service: phitosanitary certificate (for plants) issued by the competent local authority; sanitary certificate (for pets) issued by a veterinary and duly stamped by USDA, dated within one week prior to pets' departure; rabies vaccination, as applicable.

Sanitary and phitosanitary certificates must also certify that, up to 40 days prior to boarding, no contagious disease had been detected in the place of origin. Admittance of animals other than dogs, cats and pet birds require prior approval by the Ministry of Agriculture."

The restrictions on bringing animals or plant materials out of the country are also very strong, but people still try to smuggle endangered or exotic wild animals out of the rain forest. Some people want to keep exotic wild animals as pets, even though it may not be a good thing for the animals. <return to top>

What animals live in the canopy layer of the rain forest, and what foods do they eat?
Chris, age <=8
Philadelphia, PA

There are lots of animals and plenty of food at the canopy level of the rain forest. To be more specific, Insects and Arthropods, such as ants, termites, and spiders; Birds, such as parakeets, toucans and macaws; Reptiles, such as dart frogs and green serpents; and Mammals, such as bats, monkeys, marmosets and sloths, all make their home at the canopy level.

Where there is good food, you are bound to find a crowd and the rain forest is no exception. The canopy is considered the powerhouse of the forest and where most of the photosynthesis takes place. In other words, it's where a majority of the tasty treats grow.

The foods animals eat vary from fruits, such as cupua�u and tukum‹, to nuts, the most famous of them- the Brazil nut. The leaves of the forest are also a great meal for some animals. Some monkeys and the sloth make a meal of leaves. There are also many leaf eating insects. The hoatzin (Opisthocomus hoazin) is one of the few leaf eating birds. Leaves stay in its stomach for up to two days.

There are other kinds of foods as well. Nectar, found in many flowers of the rain forest, is a favorite meal for many birds and insects. Nectar is sugar dissolved in water and stored inside flowers.

Another popular meal is sap. Sap is the sugary liquid that grows in the leaves of trees and flows down through the trunk and roots to keep these parts alive and growing. The pygmy marmoset will chew out holes from the trunks of trees and visit the trees at intervals to lap up the sap. Yummy!

Finally, many animals at the canopy level eat each other. Frogs enjoy a healthy diet of insects, some snakes like to eat frog eggs, and the spider Cupiennius coccineus is known to eat tree frogs. It's all part of the circle of life in the rain forest.<return to top>

What type of soil is found in the rain forest? What is the light intensity of the rain forest?
Jennifer, age =>15
Pomona, NY

Amazonia is a land of contradictions. In this place of overwhelming greenery, where the sun shines brightest, the soil is poor and there's a permanent gloom at ground level. Despite the luxuriant growth of plant matter in the Amazon rain forest, much of the local soil is lacking in the mineral nutrients needed for plant growth. The nutrients are stored and redistributed through the trees and other plant materials themselves. That's why shifting agriculture, or slash and burn, techniques are used by some of the locals. The vegetation is cut down and burned to provide enough nutrients to raise crops for a few years. Other kinds of plants, such as Epiphytes, never use the soil for nutrients at all. All of its nutrients are derived from sources such as fungi, animals and decomposing litter.

The Amazon rain forest spans the equator where the sun's rays are the strongest throughout the year. Rain forest plants have had millions of years of evolution to perfect their light gathering techniques. While at the top of the canopy light is quite abundant, at the lower levels light is the most sought after commodity and actual light intensity at ground level is quite low. The canopy layer trees are closely spaced with flat spreading crowns which fit together like a jigsaw puzzle. Many plants use vines or lianas to reach for the precious light energy needed for photosynthesis. When a tree falls in the rain forest, thousands of small plants engage in cutthroat competition to take the place of the fallen, often growing toward the canopy in a rapid burst after years of slow growth in the gloom of the forest floor. <return to top>

What kinds of monkeys live in the rainforest?
Tristian, age 12
Memphis, TN

More than 20% of the world's primates, roughly 50 species, are found in Amazonia, making it one of the most diversified regions in the world. The monkeys of the rain forest are divided into three categories: Callitrichidae, Callimiconidae and Cebidae. The spider monkey (Ateles sp.) weighs up to 12 kilograms, is the largest member of this group in Amazonia, while the smallest in the region and in the world for that matter is the pygmy marmoset (Ebuella pygmeae) weighing less than 150 grams. A list of some of the other monkeys of the rain forest include: Callimiconidae (a monkey discovered at the beginning of the last century), squirrel monkeys (weigh around 1 kilogram and live in bands of around 50), the brown capuchin, sakis (live in bands of 30 and found in the Rio Negro and Rio Madeira region), the red uakari and black uakari (live in groups of 45), and then there are the larger monkeys like the howler monkeys and woolly monkeys. They live in small bands of three to seven individuals. New species of monkeys have been discovered recently in the Rio Negro area and there's no telling how many undiscovered species remain.<return to top>

Are the frogs really poisonous?
Rachael, age 11
Mobile, AL

Yes, but not all of them. There are over 160 species of poison frogs that belong to the family Dendrobatidae. Only 50 of these species are brightly colored and have poisonous skin. The bright coloring, including vibrant yellows, reds and blues in patterns of lines, spots and swirls, tells predators to stay away, or else. Other non-poisonous frogs, of which there are many species, rely on camouflage and the dark of night for their protection from hungry hunters. The native people of the forest have learned how to exploit these poisons for hunting, although it does mean some stress for the frogs, since they only excrete large amounts of toxins when distressed. A recent study by University of Oklahoma professor Janalee P. Caldwell suggests that the Amazonian poison frogs get the toxins from what they eat. The wild frogs eat a lot of ants, which have their own poisonous compounds. Captive frogs which were deprived of their normal diet of ants didn't develop the poisons.<return to top>

Do you have owls in the Amazon forest?
Paola, age <=8
Miami, FL

Yes. Although finding information about specific Amazonian owls was not easy. Here's a partial list of South American owls from the web site www.owlpages.com. Some of them live in tropical rain forest environments. Tropical Screech Owl, Maria Koepcke's Screech Owl, Peruvian Screech Owl, Montane Forest Screech Owl, Rufescent Screech Owl, Cloud Forest Screech Owl, Colombian Screech Owl, Cinnamon Screech Owl, Northern & Southern Tawny-bellied Screech Owl, Black-capped Screech Owl, Long-tufted Screech Owl, Vermiculated Screech Owl, Roraima Screech Owl, Rio Napo Screech Owl, White Throated Screech Owl, Crested Owl, Magellan Horned Owl, Short-browed Owl, Tawny-browed Owl, Band-bellied Owl, Mottled Owl, Rufous-legged Owl, Chaco Owl, Rusty-Barred Owl, Rufous-banded Owl, Black-and-white Owl, Black-banded Owl, Mountain Pygmy Owl, Cloud-forest Pygmy Owl, Central American Pygmy Owl, Least Pygmy Owl, Amazonian Pygmy Owl, Subtropical Pygmy Owl, Andean Pygmy Owl, Yungas Pygmy Owl, Peruvian Pygmy Owl, Austral Pygmy Owl, Ridgway's Pygmy Owl, Chaco Pygmy Owl, Long-whiskered Owlet, Buff-fronted Owl, Stygian Owl, Striped Owl.

Owls are widely distributed throughout the world. From tiny desert owls to the snowy owls living in the arctic tundra of Greenland, there are a wide variety of owl species and sizes. In fact, there is only one continent where there are no owls: Antarctica.<return to top>

What are some of the kinds of trees located in the amazon rain forest?
Jon , age 10
Geneva, IL

The number of tree species is huge, especially when compared with temperate forests. Many of the rain forest hardwood trees, such as Mahogany and Rosewood, are considered exotic and prized by woodworkers. Many rain forest trees are considered as threatened species and a search of the World Conservation Monitoring Centre's tree conservation database lists more than 500 matches for threatened species in Brazil. What we don't know about the trees of the Amazon is much more than what we do know. Here are some odd facts:

• Many species of rain forest trees are related to the legume family which includes beans and peas. Talk about Jack and the bean stalk, some of these trees reach 200 feet in height.
  
• There is a kind of tree sap taken from a common amazon tree which acts as a pain killer. As little as one drop of the sap, known as "Sangre de Grado", can diminish pain from insect bites, stings, cuts, burns and plant rashes for up to 6 hours.
• Another amazon tree species, Copaifera langsdorfia, has a sap which is so similar to diesel fuel that it can be used in truck engines.

How much rain falls in the Amazon?
Bindia, age 11
Gatesville, TX

Lots of rain is one of the things that distinguishes a rain forest. The term "rain forest" was first used in 1898 by a German botanist named Schimper, to describe forests that grow in constantly wet conditions. They can occur wherever the annual rainfall is more than 80 inches (2000mm) and evenly spread throughout the year. Rain forests are found in temperate as well as tropical regions, but the best known ones, like the Amazon, occur in a belt around the equator. In rain forests the overhead canopy is closed, with few large gaps between trees, which can reach 130-165 feet (40-50 meters) with some trees know as emergents reaching 200 feet (65 meters). In the Amazon rain forest 65 inches (1700mm) to 140 inches (3600mm) of rain falls per year. By contrast, central Texas has an annual average rainfall of 40 inches (1015mm). <return to top>

Why does fruit taste sweet but it is healthy?
Nicky, age <=8
Ft. Stewart, GA

While we are not experts at nutrition and diet, just because something is sweet doesn't make it bad for you. It's eating too much sweet stuff that can cause problems. Fruits also contain vitamins and other nutrients.

The Amazon rain forest holds a huge variety of fruit producing plants. As you may know, fruits carry the seeds of the plant. Seeds are the plant's way of reproducing and carry within them the nutrients needed to start growing a new plant. Over time, plants have developed lots of different ways of dispersing their seeds to give the seedlings a chance to grow and reproduce themselves. Some plants rely on the wind to spread their seed, others produce nuts and some produce fruit. Fruit acts as a bribe from the plant to animals and insects who eat the fruit and discard the seeds. Fruits tend to be attractive to animals, both in color and in smell, and are high in energy and easily digested. Many plants use a strategy of producing huge numbers of seeds and large production of fruit, thus insuring that some of the seeds will survive to grow into plants. <return to top>

What is the food chain in the amazon rainforest?
Rachel, age 13

The food chain, or as some prefer, the food web, in the amazon is a lot like it is anywhere else, except more complex, since the diversity of species is greater.

In general, the sequence goes something like this:
The plants and trees act as primary producers through photosynthesis. The fungi, bacteria and certain kinds of insect act as decomposers, breaking down plant materials, droppings, and remains. The product of this growth and decomposition is in the form of fruit, nectar, leaves and the insects themselves, all of which act as food for the next level of consumers. These primary consumers include the leaf eaters, fruit and seed eaters, and nectar and pollen eaters. Further up the chain are the secondary consumers, which are the creatures that eat other creatures. The predators and carrion eaters live on the energy they get from eating the animals who live on the energy they get from eating the plants who live on the energy they get from the sun through photosynthesis. This cycle is repeated again and again and at all levels of the forest. The number of different species at all levels of this food web is staggering and this simple description hardly does justice to the amount of activity that takes place in the forest. Everywhere you look there are examples of production, decomposition and consumption, all of which continue throughout the year with a constant supply of light energy and water to keep the cycle going. <return to top>

Why are people cutting down the rainforest? Don't people care about the animals they ruin?
Kelly, age 13
La Crosse, WI

The people who are cutting down parts of the rain forest are not evil. There are, of course, a few bad apples who don't care about anyone but themselves, but in general the people of the Amazon rain forest are good people who are just trying to get by. It is important to distinguish between the indigenous (or native) people of the rain forest and the "civilized" people who live in the rain forest. The natives may also be cutting down parts of the forest, but there aren't very many of them and the impact they have on forest is less than the larger number of forest dwellers who do not live by the ancient cultural traditions of the natives. Some of the people don't really understand the long term damage that they are doing and others understand, but, in order to care for their families, feel that they must continue doing what they are doing.

Much of the destruction of the rain forest is done to make room for a kind of farming called shifting agriculture. This kind of farming is very different from the farming done in most of the world. Despite the fact that the jungle is obviously rich with nutrients and growth, not much of that richness is in the soil. The nutrients are all held within the growing plants and animals. What farmers do is to cut down and burn the trees and vegetation in an area so that the nutrients in the foliage is available to the crops that they plant. That nutrition is used up within a couple of years of farming and the farmers must move on to another plot of forest to start the same cycle over again. The burned down and used up areas in the forest may recover within 10-20 years, but at the current rate, there won't be enough rain forest to sustain the population. There may be sustainable ways of harvesting from the rain forest without destroying it, but it takes time to develop and spread these farming practices.

The solutions to the problems that lead people to destroy the rain forest are complex and need to be developed in concert with the people who are most directly involved: the people of the Amazon. <return to top>

How many animals are there in the rain forest?
Kim, age 14
San Francisco, CA

This is not a simple question.

First we're going to assume that you mean animal species and not individual animals. If we counted the individual animals we could count until we're old and gray and only scratch the surface.

We should also clarify what is meant by an animal. For our purposes we are counting insects as part of the animal kingdom. That's important because of the huge number of insect species in the rain forest and their importance to the life cycle of the forest.

As you may have guessed by now, the true answer to your question is: No one really knows. Every time scientists do surveys to estimate total animal species, they find new ones. Just to give some ballpark figures. There are an estimated 6,000 species of butterfly in the Amazon rain forest. The Amazon River is estimated to contain 2,000 species of fish. Each type of tree may support more than 400 insect species. "Biologically, it is probably the richest and most diverse region in the world, containing about 20 percent of all higher plant species, perhaps the same proportion of bird species and around ten percent of the worlds mammals." (The Last Rain Forests: a World Conservation Atlas, Oxford Univ. Press, 1990.) This incredible diversity of species is one of the main reasons for preserving the remaining rain forest regions.<return to top>

How many different types of tree are there in the rain forest?
Paul, age 11
Marysville, OH

The short answer is: No one really knows.

Another short answer would be: Lots.

Here's a longer answer: According to the book, The Last Rainforests: a World Conservation Atlas: "The diversity of tropical tree species is immense. There are commonly 50-200 different species per hectare (2.5 acres), compared with ten species in a similar area of temperate woodland. In spite of this diversity, many tropical trees look superficially alike and for this reason are difficult even for botanists to identify."
In the Brazilian Amazon, near Manaus, in an area of about 1,900 square feet scientists identified 1,652 plants belonging to 107 species in 37 different families. The estimate of total tree species in Amazônia is 2,500. Sometimes it is difficult to define what is meant by a tree. Many species of tree seedlings remain small and might be considered as undergrowth, but when an opening in the canopy occurs, these small plants put all of their effort into growth and soon become small trees. They are in direct competition with one another for the most scarce resource in the forest, light. In time they can become the buttressed giants that we associate with the rain forest. <return to top>

What is Amazônia?
Amazônia is the name of a region in central South America which features the largest river in the world, the Amazon. Amazônia is unique in many ways. It is the home of a huge number of the world's species, the location of most of the fresh water in the world, and the area where much of the earth's oxygen is generated by the largest rainforest in the world. <return to top>

Where is Amazônia?
Amazônia is located in the north central part of South America (on the planet Earth). The rainforest was there long before there were countries, but Peru, Columbia, Bolivia, Venezuela, and Brazil all share the territory known as Amazônia. Brazil holds the largest part of the rainforest and the Amazon river and even has a state called Amazonas. The area that our expeditions and our Web site will focus on is the Rio Negro which flows from its origins in the Andes mountains of Venezuela and Columbia, to its meeting with the Rio Solimões near the city of Manaus to form the Amazon. <return to top>

Where did the name Amazon come from?
The name Amazon comes from a Greek myth about a race of warrior women. When Spanish explorer Francisco de Orellana was exploring the area in 1541, he encountered local tribes where the women fought side-by-side with the male warriors, knowing the Greek myth, he called them Amazons. The river now bears that name (the Amazon River), as does the Brazilian state (Amazonas), and the general name for the rain forest region extending beyond Brazil into portions of Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, and Venezuela. (Amazônia). <return to top>

Why is the rain forest wet?
Because it rains a lot, duh!
One fifth (that's 20%) of all the fresh water in the world is in the Amazon basin (which is actually several geographically created rain water drainage basins). If you know anything about the water cycle, you know that water all over the world is constantly being recycled through evaporation and precipitation (rainfall). A high level of rainfall is the main factor that makes this a rainforest, although there are other factors which make a place a rainforest. The Andes mountains play a large role in the climate of the region. Water vapor, picked up from ocean evaporation, comes down as rain over central South America. All of the rainfall across the region is captured in the connected drainage basins of Amazônia and funneled out to the Atlantic. The bounty of water flowing through the area supports an incredible diversity of life. <return to top>

Why are there naked people on your Web site?
Everyone is naked under their clothes. Deal with it. The indigenous people of Amazônia live as they have for thousands of years. They are people just like you and me, with morals and culture and all that goes along with being human. They live very near the Equator where it is very warm all year long and, as such, have little need for clothing to stay warm. They do wear clothing, in the form of loincloths, headdresses, jewelry, and ornaments, for their own cultural reasons. These days the ones nearest to "western" cultures wear hats, shorts, and T-shirts with logos you would recognize (and might be wearing right now). <return to top>