35 Amazing Facts about Amazon Rainforest | Amazing Facts 4U
- The Amazon rainforest gets its name from the Amazon River, the life force of the rainforest. It is the world’s largest tropical rainforest located in the Amazon basin of South America. There are so much abundance and variety of flora and fauna that much of it is yet to be documented.
- The Amazon rainforest has existed for at least 55 million years.
- At over five million square kilometers, the Amazon rainforest is the largest in the world covering 2/5th of South America. This is the equivalent to approximately 2/3 of the continental USA.
- Amazingly the Amazon rainforest accounts for 54% of the entire world’s remaining rainforests.
- Brazil has 60%, Peru has 13%, and Columbia has 10% of the Amazon rainforest. It also stretches into the countries of Venezuela, Bolivia, Suriname, Guyana, French Guyana, and Ecuador.
- The basin is drained by the Amazon River, the world’s largest river in terms of discharge, and the second-longest river in the world after the Nile. The river is made up of over 1,100 tributaries, 17 of which are longer than 1000 miles.
- The Amazon River once poured into the Pacific Ocean. When the Andes Mountains have formed 15 million years ago, the Amazon River’s flow was slowly blocked until huge freshwater lakes were formed. Approximately 10 million years ago, the river changed its course to pour into the Atlantic ocean.
- Very little sunlight makes it through the dense canopy of trees and foliage covering the Amazon rainforest. On the ground, it is nearly completely dark. Amazingly only 2% of sunlight makes it to the bottom. In fact, if it started raining, it would take ten minutes before you even got wet!
- Out of all the energy that goes into the Amazon, 9/10ths of it are stored in tree leaves and tissues.
- The Amazon Rainforest receives about nine feet of rain every year.
- Approximately 200,000 people live in the Amazon rainforest the vast majority of them indigenous Indians. In fact 500 years ago about 10 million indigenous Indians lived there.
- Among these 200,000 people, there are 50 tribes that have never been in contact with the outside world. There are approximately 170 different languages spoken by the Amazon natives. The Yanomami tribe is the largest tribe in the Amazon today.
- The number of edible fruits found in the rainforest is estimated at 3,000. Amazon natives consume more than 1,500, but only 200 are cultivated for use today.
- The amazing fact is that the Amazon rainforest is home to over two and a half million different species of insect, more than forty thousand varieties of plant, one and a half thousand bird species, and over two thousand fish species.
- Candiru fish is a nasty little creature also called the toothpick fish, which has been reported to swim up the urethra of bathers and lodges itself therein. Removal by surgery is the only treatment.
- About 25% of all drugs are derived from rainforest ingredients and this is just from the 10% that have been tested for medicinal properties. In fact of the plants known to have anti-cancer properties, 70% are found in the rainforest.
- Most of our food in fact came originally from the rainforests of the Amazon. Amazon-derived products in fact include bananas, black pepper, chocolate, coffee, corn, pineapple, rice, and tomatoes.
- Over 500 different mammals live in the Amazon rainforest including capybaras, which are the largest rodents on earth, jaguars, spider monkeys, vampire bats, and sloths. There are also over 300 different species of reptile including the anaconda snake and the caiman, a species of crocodile.
- The world’s largest species of bat called the fishing bat has large claws. It’s also called the bulldog bat because of its dog-like snout. In the dark of night, it swoops down on fish whose surface ripples it detects using its sonar. It is the only bat species to be able to fish.
- The glass frog’s flesh is entirely transparent, allowing you to see the internal organs, including the heart pumping away. It takes on the hue of surrounding vegetation, making it hard to see.
- In the Amazon river itself, there are about 30 times as many different species of fish as in all European rivers combined. These include freshwater catfish called pirarucu that can grow to over 10 feet long and electric eels capable of stunning a man besides carnivorous red-bellied piranha fish.
- Located in the Amazon is a 300-pound fish known as the Arapaimam which is covered in armor-like protective scales that protects them from a Piranha bite.
- One-third of the world’s species of birds live in the Amazon rainforest, amongst them macaws, toucans, herons, and parrots.
- The Toucan, the loudest bird in the Amazon rainforest, can be heard from a distance of half a mile away.
- A variety of evergreen broad-leaf trees make up most of the Amazon rainforest. Amazingly variety is so much that you can find over 200 different species in just one hectare of rainforest. Amazon water lily can measure over 7 feet across. These trees and other rainforest plants produce 20 percent of the world’s oxygen.
- Amazon river approximately 4000 miles long drains an area equivalent in size to the United States and it has 16% of the World’s river water. During the high water season, it can be 30 miles wide and the river’s mouth maybe 300 miles wide, and every day up to 500 billion cubic feet of water ( About 5.8 million cubic feet/sec) may flow into the Atlantic. This daily flow into the Atlantic is enough to supply New York City’s freshwater needs for nine years. The force of the current from sheer water volume alone causes Amazon River water to continue flowing amazing 125 miles out to sea before mixing with Atlantic saltwater.
- The river current carries tons of suspended sediment all the way from the Andes. It is calculated that 106 million cubic feet of suspended sediment are swept into the ocean each day. The result from the silt deposited at the mouth of the Amazon is Majaro island, a river island about the size of Switzerland.
- Of the top 8 largest rivers by the volume of water discharge, the Amazon River is bigger than all the others combined.
- The full moon causes a tidal wave to roll up the Amazon river once a day and once a night for a period of only three weeks once a year, resulting in a continuous 4-meter high wave that can be surfed for up to 13 km.
- It is believed that there is an underground river running below the Amazon, about 4 km underground and almost as long.
- It is unfortunate that an estimated number of 2,700 million acres of the rainforest are burned each year.
- Amazingly in 2011, a fungus, Pestalotiopsis microspora, was found in the Amazonian Forest which can survive on a diet solely consisting of polyurethane (plastic).
- A 17-year-old woman, Juliane Koepcke, fell 3 km into the Amazon rainforest when her plane crashed. She survived & walked 10 days before being rescued. All 91 of her other co-passengers died.
- The first “found footage” film was “Cannibal Holocaust” from 1980. It was filmed in the Amazon Rainforest using real indigenous tribes interacting with the actors.
- A man named Martin Strel swam the 3273-mile length of the Amazon in a record-breaking 66 days.
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