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Jaguars, harpy eagle, yellow anaconda, poison dart frogs, red bellied piranha, leaf cutter ants and tarantulas all live in the Amazon rainforest.
The jaguars shape and agility makes it particularly adapted to swimming, climbing, crawling and sprinting at incredible speeds. It's strength allows it to capture a variety of species. Large sized ungulates such as deer which is preferred but they also eat peccaries and caimans. It's jaws and teeth are so powerful that it can bite through the shell of a turtle!
Banana trees, orchid, coffee, brazil nut trees, poinsettia, cacao, rubber tree, heliconia, sapodilla and bromeliad are all amazing trees and plants that live in the Amazon rainforest.
The emergent layer is where all the tallest trees are, they are around 200 feet off the ground and the trunks are around 16 feet wide! Most of these trees are broard leaved, hardwood evergreens. There is loads of sunlight in the emergent layer because it's right at the top above all the other plants and this the ideal place for a plant to be. Eagles, monkeys, bats and butterflies live here.
The canopy layer is like a roof, it covers the two other layers underneath it and is the thickest layer. Most trees in the canopy have smooth, oval leaves that come to a point. Lots of animals live in the canopy because food is abundant. Snakes, toucans and tree frogs live here.
In the understory layer not a lot of sunshine reaches this level so plants have to grow larger leaves to reach the sunlight. The plants in this layer occasionally grow to about 12 feet. Jaguars, red eyed tree frogs and leopards live here. There is also lots of insects that live here.
On the forest floor it is very dark and almost no plants live here. Because hardly any sun reaches the forest floor then things decay very quickly. A leaf that might take a year to decompose in a regular climate it will disappear in 6 weeks. Giant anteaters live on the forest floor.
The plants in the Amazon rainforest have evolved unique characteristics to help it survive in its environment. These are some things that plants have adapted. Fan palms have large, fan-shaped leaves that are good for catching sunlight and water. The leaves are segmented so excess water can drain away. The rainforest has a very thin layer of fertile soil so trees only need shallow roots to reach the nutrients that they need. But shallow roots don't give enough support to hold these towering trees so they have developed huge buttress roots. These stretch from the ground to two or more meters up the trunk and they help anchor the tree to the ground. Lianas are woody vines that start at ground level and use other trees to climb up to the canopy where they spread from tree to tree to get as much sunlight as possible. Strangler figs start at the top of a tree and then work down. The seed is dropped in a nook at the top of a tree and starts to grow, using the debris collected there as nourishment. Gradually the fig sends aerial roots down the trunk of the host until they reach the ground to take root. As the fig gets older it will eventually surround the host, criss-cross its roots around the trunk and start to strangle. The figs branches will grow taller to catch the sunlight and invasive roots rob the host of nutrients. Eventually the host will die and decompose leaving the hollow but sturdy trunk of the strangler fig.
In the Amazon rainforest the soil is thin and poor in nutrients. In some parts of the Amazon river basin, white, sandy soils are found which have evolved through erosion over hundreds of millions of years. Although these soils have lost their mineral content and fertility, rich rainforests grow on them. In the rainforest some of the highest trees on the planet shoot to the sky. Dead plants and animals quickly decompose and their organic matter is utilized by other organisms. The rainforest depends on its nutrients on the constant recycling of its enormous biomass.
An Ecosystem is a biological community of interacting organisms and their physical environment.
This is where the Amazon rainforest is.
In the Amazon it is very dark on the ground because there are tall trees all around you and they block out the sunlight. It would also be very humid because it rains a lot this is because the rain evaporates into the air and makes the air very warm. All different types of tropical plants will be around you but there won't be very many because they need sunlight to grow. You will be able to here lots of animal noises like birds or monkeys.
This is a climate graph of the amazon rainforest.
It shows that it rains more from December to May and then it doesn't rain a lot from June to November. At the beginning of the year the temperature is around 26.5*C. Then it stays around the the same temperature until the end of September and then it decreases to 26*C at the end of the year.
The Amazon rainforest is a biome with a high temperature and a high rainfall. The level of humidity and density of the vegetation give the ecosystem a unique water and nutrient cycle.
The people who live in the Amazon rainforest are called Amerindians they rely on their surroundings for food shelter and medicines. Today very few forest people live in traditional ways. They grow crops like bananas, manioc and rice, they use things like metal pots, pans and utensils and make regular trips to towns and cities to bring foods and other items to sell at markets. These people can teach us a lot about the rainforest. Their knowledge of medical plants is much better than ours.