Kids Zone

LEAF CUTTER ANTS
Atta sexdens

Leaf cutter ants could be the smallest recyclers on the planet. These little ants serve an extremely useful purpose in the rainforest. Leaf cutter ants cut small holes into the leaves of vascular plants. The ants then pick up these giant pieces of leaf and carry them down into their dens.

Once in the burrows, the chunks of leaves are combined with ant waste to turn the leaves into a compost pile that grows fungus. The fungus provides the topsoil with valuable nutrients for plants.

Leaf cutter ants feed on a range of fresh leaves, fruits, flowers, tubers, and stems of plants. Leaf cutter ants aren't the most thorough critter, though. They show a tendency to move on to a new tree before completely devouring the one they are currently feeding on. Leaf cutter ants travel long distances from the nest in order to find better foliage. The ants move in a single line, devouring everything in the way, often leaving visible trails through the forest floor.

KINKAJOU
Potos flavus

Kinkajous are some of the most mis-understood mammal of the tropical rainforest.

The kinkajou is found throughout southern Mexico, Central America, and the Amazon basin. They live high in the forest canopy, nearly 100 feet off the ground.

Because they live so high off the ground and are nocturnal, it takes a very dedicated scientist to try and study the behaviors of a kinkajou.

Even though a kinkajou might resemble a monkey in a lot of ways, it actually belongs to the same family as a racoon and a coati. Kinkajous are only about 26 inches long, or about the size of a housecat.. Its tail is 18 inches long and its body is only 8 inches- that’s less than half! Although the kinkajou is a great climber, it doesn't leap from tree to tree like monkey. It uses its long tail as an extra arm- for swinging and climbing.

Kinkajous are classified as carnivores, though scientists believe that they live entirely on fruit. Their skull structure and teeth are similar to carnivores, but recently scientists have discovered that kinkajous love feeding on nectar, figs, and other fruit.

King Vultures can be found throughout Latin America from Southern Mexico to Southern Argentina. It prefers the lush, tropical lowlands.

King Vultures have an incredible sense of sight and smell. This allows them to find their food from high in the sky. They will often locate food by the presence of the other vulture species. Once the King Vulture lands, though, the other birds make way for it.

The vulture's head is bald so that it is easily cleaned when devouring prey.

Their feet are designed for perching, and are not adapted to seizing and killing or holding prey, as are those of the Eagles, Hawks, and Owls. Their bills are smaller, compared to other birds of prey, which make them able to penetrate the carcasses of large animals.

There are over 200 species of reptiles found in Costa Rica. Some of the more frequently seen reptiles in Costa Rica is the Green Iguana

Most iguanas live in the rainforests of Central and South America but some come from drier areas and along the coasts. Young iguanas are a very light green and blend in well with their natural habitat. Their tail is striped and this also help them blend in. Older iguanas live high up in the trees. All iguanas are excellent climbers. They are also great swimmers. They hold their legs close to their body and propel through the water using their tail, much the same way as crocodiles and alligators swim.

Iguanas can reach a length of 5-7 feet. Weighing as much as 18 pounds. In the wild, iguanas are expected to live for 10-15 years.

Iguanas are pretty strict herbivores, choosing to eat leaves and plants, though sometimes they'll eat small insects to supplement their protein intake.

Green iguanas have good senses of hearing and smell, and superb vision. Their long tail is also quite sharp, and is snapped in the air as a defense mechanism. The tail can also break off if caught by a predator, but grows back without permanent damage. Green iguana skin is very water resistant, and tough to avoid cuts and scratches.

Like many tropical species, the green iguana is also threatened by habitat destruction. The green iguana is also a victim of the pet industry. Many people in the United States and elsewhere want a green iguana for a pet, so there is a big demand for their capture. Although many pet iguanas are now being raised on iguana farms, capture from the wild has lowered their numbers.

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The Howler Monkey is often heard before being seen. Click here to hear what one sounds like!

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Howler Monkeys are vegetarians, and eat mostly leaves, fruits, and flowers.

American crocodiles have long, slender snouts and live in tropical wetlands. Adult crocodiles are usually 7 to 15 feet long and weigh 150 to 450 pounds.

American crocodiles inhabit areas where fresh and salt waters mix, called brackish water, such as coastal wetlands and canals. These Crocodiles are found in southern Florida, the Caribbean, southern Mexico, and along the Central American coast south to Venezuela.

Adult crocs maintain dens near nest sites, which are burrows dug 3-9 m into creek banks, with the entrance at or below the waterline. This is where the females lay their eggs (usually about 40 at a time) The majority of females build mound nests of soil or sand, but some individuals excavate hole nests. The size of nest mounds increase as the females increase in size.

Crocodiles are endangered throughout most of the world. American Crocodiles also occupy the largest range of any crocodilian. They live throughout southern Florida, along the Caribbean coast of Mexico and Central America.

They are often on the receiving end of bad press, and the American Crocodiles are not as aggressive as some of the Crocodiles found in Africa and Australia.

For centuries Crocodiles have been hunted for their hides. Shoes, hats, and belts are often made from their leathery hides.

The Collared Aracari makes its home year-round in the tropical rainforests of southern Mexico and throughout Central America. The most distinctive physical chararcteristic of the Aracari is its amazing beak. Their beaks, about 4 inces long, are almost a quarter of the bird's entire body.

Their bodies are a rainbow of colors, especially their breasts and beaks. On their breasts, Collared Aracaris have yellow, red and green feathers. They also have red or blue plumage surrounding their eyes.

Aracaris are related to the larger Toucans, but are considered Toucanets. The main difference between aracaris and toucans, besides size, is their tail. The Collared Aracari has a much more sharp and pointed tail than the larger Toucans.

Aracaris are highly sociable and usually found in small flocks. They roost communally in tree holes. Young aracaris may be fed by a group of adults instead of just the parents, which is unusual for birds to do.

Aracaris like to eat the fruits from ficus trees and palms. They are also known to consume large numbers of insects, small reptiles, eggs, and even fledgling birds.

Click to hear a Collared Aracari

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The White-Nosed Coati (or cotamundi) is the Costa Rican version of a raccoon. Raccoons are found in Costa Rica as well, but because cotamundis are diurnal, people have a better chance of seeing them.

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Coatis are reddish in color and spend most of their time looking for food on the ground. They'll eat just about anything they come across.

Spectacled caimans are the most common species of the crocodilian family. The Spectacled Caiman is one of the smallest crocodilians, but is the largest of the caiman family. Males generally reach 2-2.5 meters (6-7 feet long), with the largest specimens reported to approach 3 meters. But a caiman that is 9 feet long is very rare. Females are smaller, usually reaching a size of 1.5 meters, and rare individuals may reach 2 meters.

Caiman is a Spanish term for "alligator" or any crocodilian. A spectacled Caiman's common name derives from a bony ridge which is found near the front of the eyes appearing to connect the eyes like a pair of spectacles.

Caimans swim very well, mainly using their tails to propel themselves through the water, and also using their webbed feet.

Caimans are nocturnal, preferring to hunt at night. Young caimans eat a variety of aquatic invertebrates (insects, crustaceans, mollusks). As they grow, various vertebrates take up a greater percentage of the diet. These include fish, amphibians, reptiles and water birds. Older animals are capable of taking larger, mammalian prey. It's been said that an adult caiman can hunt a wild pig or even a tapir. Scientists have discovered that when the caiman's habitat becomes drier, during the dry season, caimans stop feeding. Often, a caiman will eat other caimans under such conditions, this is known as cannibalism.

Unlike the bigger crocodilians, like the American Alligator and Freshwater Crocodile, the Caiman population is quite strong. The skin of Caimans is not ideally suited to tanning, so therefore the caiman is not hunted as much as its larger cousins.

Yet, the caiman is still threatened by habitat loss. They live in freshwater habitats in South and Central America, including the Amazon basin. They prefer still water, but also live in lowland wetlands and rivers. When people move into the caiman's habitat, the caiman does not respond well. Caimans need large ranges to hunt their prey.

The caiman is a a protected species throughout much of the world. There are farms throughout the caimans' habitat that is helping to restore the caiman to their natural habitat.

There are over 260 species of mammals found in the Costa Rican rainforest. 50% of the mammals found in Costa Rica are bats. Bats are the only mammals that can fly, but since they are covered in fur, they cannot be classified as birds.

Bats are widely distributed around the world. In fact the only areas that bats aren't found are in the Arctic and Ataractic regions.

Larger bats eat fish, fruit, small animals, while other drink the nectar of flowers or animal blood.

The fruit-eating bats are the largest type of bats found in Costa Rica. In fact the Jamaican Fruit Bat can have up to a 16-inch wingspan. However, for their size don't weigh very much. Even though the Jamaican Fruit Bat is over a foot in length it weighs less than 2 ounces.

Bats are nocturnal. This means that they sleep during the day and are active during the night. During the day, bats roost hollow trees, under wooded roofs, or deep inside caves.

Some species of bats prefer to roost in communities. Communities of bats range in size from 50- 1 million! These bats are known as social bats. There are some bats, though, that prefer to live and hunt by themselves. These are known as solitary bats.

A common misconception about bats is that they are blind. Different species of bats have different types of eyes that range in complexity. Even though bats' eyes tend to be small, they are very well adapted to seeing at night.

Bats do however use high frequency sounds to help them to see better. The echo that they hear when the sound comes back is called 'echo-location'. When the sound that they send out hits the trees, ground, bushes, animals, insects, and other things around them, it bounces around in all different directions. But, the bats are able to tell the direction or angle that the echo is coming back from. This lets the bat know the direction that things are. Now, since sound travels very fast, the bat is also able to tell how long the sounds take to come back to them. So, now the bat knows where the echoes are coming from and how far away things are.

Another amazing bat species found in Costa Rica is the Fishing Bulldog Bat, which lives in the tropical lowlands near Tortuguero. This bat has an impressive 18-inch wingspan and hunts fish using radar. When fish get too close to the surface of the water, the ripples they cause send a radar signal to the bat. The bat then swoops down to the water's surface and catches the fish in its talons, much like a fish-eating raptor (like an eagle or osprey).

The Black Anhinga is an interesting bird that is 32-36 inches in height (a little bit smaller than a Great Blue Heron). This bird has an impressive wingspan of up to 4 feet and weighs up to 3 lbs. Some of the first physical characteristics you'll notice about the Anihina is its blackish, very long, thin, neck. It has a small snakelike head with long pointed bill which makes it very well suited to fishing.

Anhingas dive under water for prey. They spear their prey with their pointed beak like an arrow. Sometimes an Anhinga's thrust is so powerful that it has to swim to shore and pry the fish off its beak by rubbing it against a rock. They primarily eat fish, but will also eat aquatic insects, crayfish, leeches, shrimp, tadpoles, frog eggs, and even young alligators and water snakes.

Usually Anhingas are found nesting and roosting in trees and bushes in freshwater swamps, lakes, sluggish streams in sheltered and murky waters. The Anhinga, like other aquatic birds, loves vegetation.Although it doesn't eat the vegetation, these birds use it for protection from predators. Near coastal areas, Anhingas can be found around brackish lagoons, and in mangroves.

The female anhingas have a pale brown head, neck, and breast The males are almost completely black. A juvenile Anhinga is brownish in color to help it stay camouflaged from predators.

People of the Rainforest

People with Spanish ancestors who live along the rivers of the rain forest are called riberneros or mestizos. They live in small villages or farms. They speak with Spanish accents and have dark skin and dark hair. They wear clothes much like we wear in the United States in warmer weather. They live a very simple life, usually cooking outside whatever they can find from the forest, grow in a small garden, or trade in the city for.

People who are native to a place (their ancestors haved lived there thousands of years) are called indigenous. In the Amazon rain forest, one group of indigenous people is called the Yagua Indians. They have their own language and customs. They sometimes sell things they made or got from the forest to tourists to make money. The Yagua Indians of Peru are an indigenous group of people that live in the rain forest in the Amazon Basin near Iquitos.

These people live a very simple life making handicrafts such as wood carvings, seed necklaces, simple dolls, flutes, baskets, and miniature blow guns. They exist by fishing, hunting, and living off the land. They do not use a monetary system but rather barter for items such as clothing, towels, and red lipstick. Some of these items they keep for themselves and some of them they use to trade again for other supplies with the people that travel up and down the river.

The native dress of the Yagua Indians consists of skirts of palm fiber. They use blowguns to hunt monkeys and other small animals of the forest. The darts are carried in a quiver made from carefully folded palm leaves. The darts themselves are made of palm-leaf midrib and tuffed with silk cotton. As more and more people come to the forest area the culture of the Yagua Indians seems to be changing. Appointments must be made for groups of tourists to come to the village to trade. When a scheduled visit is arranged the members of the community don their native dress of "grass" skirts. When visitors are not around the Yagua Indians can be seen wearing jeans, shorts, and typical western clothing.

The river is very important to the lives of the people. They use rivers for washing clothes, bathing, fishing for food, and for water for cooking. Since there are no roads in the forest, the rivers are the main ways to get places. Adults and children travel by dugout canoes that are hand-made from special trees. Children as young as 5 years old know how to paddle a canoe.

Children attend schools in villages along the rivers. A typical school you might find in the rain forest is a one-room building where one teacher teaches students in many grades. They are a lot like schools in the United States 100 years ago. Usually the teacher lives in a house near the school, which is painted blue so people can identify it easily. Many times mothers helps the teacher at the school. The government owns all the schools in the Amazon Rain Forest in Peru. Most schools don't have very many supplies for students and teachers to use. Even when schools from the United States raise funds and send books to the rain forest, the very damp air makes the books wrinkle and fall apart pretty quickly.

At 20,800 sq km, this is the largest of Peru's parks and reserves. Typically, Pacaya-Samiria provides local people with food and a home, and protects ecologically important habitats. In this case 42,000 people live in and around the reserve. Juggling the needs of the human inhabitants while protecting wildlife is the job of 20-30 rangers. Staff also teach inhabitants how to best harvest the natural renewable resources to benefit the local people and to maintain thriving populations of plants and animals.

The Pacaya Samiria National Reserve, second largest natural protected area in Peru, covers an area of over 2,000,000 hectares and has an amazing biodiversity and is home to a small number of native communities that live off the Reserve’s resources. It is also the largest protected flood forest in the Amazon region.

Located in the heart of Peru’s amazonian sub-equatorial tropics, it is bounded on the north by the Marañon river and on the south by the Ucayali-Puinahua. The Samiria, Pacaya and Yanayacu-Pucate are the three main river basins within its territory.

The reserve is home of aquatic animals such as Amazon manatees, pink and grey river dolphins, two species of caiman, Giant South American river turtles, and many others. Monkeys and birds are abundant.

Bot Flies
Dermatobia hominis

Bot flies (Order Diptera, Family Cuterebridae) are large, stout bodied, hairy flies that resemble bumblebees. The botfly egg is deposited by a mosquito or sometimes by another insect. The larva grows in the host's body until it is fairly large. The botfly larva can easily be killed by taking away its air supply -- by putting vaseline or similar on the skin where the lump is, but then you still have to extract the larva. Adult botflies have nonfunctional mouthparts and do not feed. Larvae of this species parasitize wild and domestic rabbits. Females deposit their eggs in or near the entrance of their host's burrow. Bot fly larvae penetrate their host through the skin or natural body openings after hatching. The larvae form a tumor (called a warble) in the subdermal zones of their host and remain at this location until larval development is complete. Larval development varies among species, ranging from 20 to 60 days. Before pupating, the larvae leave the host's skin and drop to the soil.

Generally, the host is not severely damaged by this parasite. The majority of the injury occurs when the larvae exit the host through the warble. Parasitism by the botfly does not affect the edibility of the rabbit (assuming you eat rabbit), generally the area adjacent to the warble is trimmed away, and the rest of the rabbit is suitable to eat.
Is there such a thing as a human bot fly? Yes, we're sorry to say there is. Called the torsalo, Dermatobia hominis, occurs in Mexico and Central America. Fortunately, getting one is an extremely unlikely occurrence for the average visitor.

One of the really cool things about this insect is that it lays its eggs on a mosquito and the eggs hatch when the mosquito feeds on a host. Do humans get warbles? Yes, (are you disgusted yet)?

While the maggot feeds on its host (you) it has to have a hole in the skin so it can continue to breath. It takes about 6 weeks to complete development on its host. There are stories of entomologists rearing torsalos on themselves in order to get a good specimen of an adult (which are rarely captured), but we regard this as taking your profession a little too far.
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Also known as the lily trotter, the long legged jacana (zhah suh NAH) can indeed walk accross lily pads and other surfac vegetation in floating meadows without getting its feet wet. Those feet, with long, splayed toes and long nails, distribute the bird's weight so it can even spring over the surface of the water.

Jacanas are also good swimmers and divers, but only so-so fliers. The temporary meadows in high-water season offer a floating feast for these birds, harboring insects, snails, small fishes, and vegetation for the picking. The rest of the year, jacanas wade along rivers, oxbow lakes and irrigation ditches looking for food.

Amazon Rising: Seasons of the River. Shedd Aquarium

The tambaqui (tahm bah KEE) life cycle follows the flow of the floods. The young are born in the river channel and are carried by high water into the floodplain, where they live in floating meadows, eating grass seeds. In low-water season, their nursery is the floodplain lake, where they eat microscopic plants. At 4 or 5 years of age, they move into river channels and spawn at the start of the annual floods.

During the floods, tambaqui use their keen sense of smell as well as their vision to find their favorite fruits and seeds in the forest. They especially love rubber tree seeds, crushing them with their large molarlike teeth. (Tambaqui and a few of their close relatives are the only freshwater fishes with such teeth). Tambaqui feast throughout the floods, then move with the receding waters back to the river channel. After the floods, 10 percent of a tambaqui's weight is fat. The fish live off fat stores and don't eat much until the floods come again.

The tambaqui is one of the most important commercial fish species in the flooded forest. But unsustainable fishing practices have caused populations to plummet. Juveniles - which haven't had a chance to breed yet - are heavily fished in floodplain lakes. Furthermore, drastic environmental changes that people have made to the flooded forest - through logging, clearing for agriculture and ranching, and damming - have in many areas destroyed the habitats essential to the tambaqui's life cycle.

This six inch, 6 ounce creature is the world's smallest monkey. Pygmy marmosets are found only in the western Amazon's flodplain forests, where they keep to the middle and lower canopy levels to avoid birds of prey. During the day they feed on fruits, insects, leaves, and spiders.

Marmosets have also specialized in lapping tree sap. With their long lower incisors, they gnaw holes in the tree trunk to tap the sap, then drink it as it oozes out. They will return repeatedly to a tapped site to feed. They move easily around the tree trunks because, except for the first toe, which has a flat nail, all their digits end in curved claws- a feature unique to marmosets and closely related tamarins. At night pygmy marmosets retreat to tree holes.

Along with many fishes, giant river turtles invade the forest in high-water season to gorge on fruits, seeds, and insects. Then, as the waters recede, the usually solitary turtles migrate as far as 27 miles along river channels to converge on newly exposed sandy river beaches. They mate in the water, then large numbers of females lumber ashore to dig nests in the sand and lay 80 to 90 round white eggs. The hatchlings emerge about 48 days later, just as the rains come and the river begins to rise.

The giant river turtle is one of the largest freshwater turtles in the world. Females have an average shell length of 2 feet and typically weight 45 to 55 pounds, although they can reach 100 pounds. Males are much smaller. Historically people have hunted the big turtles for their meat and taken their eggs, either for consumption or for oil. The meat and eggs also sell for high prices in urban areas. Because the females nest in large colonies, they are easy targets for overexploitation. The sombination of killing reproductive females and emptying their nests has decimated turtle populations in some areas, and the river turtles are ranked as an endangered species.

From Amazon Rising: Seasons of the River. Shedd Aquarium

In the Amazon, ants account for more than 30 percents of the biomass, or volume of living material. Inch-long bullet ants- one of the worlds largest ant species - help tip the scales. With their large mandibles, or jaws, bullet ants clamp onto food or foes. They are aggressive hunters, preying on termites and other insects and even attacking wasp nests. They also drink nectar and water. They can carry drops of liquid in those big mandibles.

When provoked, bullet ants emit a warning screech and stand their ground. Their thick exoskeletons protect them from even birds and lizards. But their best defense is a toxic sting that causes a fiery pain (likened to a bullet wound), trembling, nausea, and local temporary paralysis.

From Amazon Rising: Seasons of the River. Shedd Aquarium.

Silver Arawana

Osteoglossum bicirrhosum

This muscular fish is locally known as the "water monkey" because it can jump out of the floodwaters to snatch beetles and spiders from nearby tree branches. Adults can propel themselves more than 3 feet - their body length - out of the water, targeting small birds, bats, and frogs. The arawana also nabs insects and spiders that fall into the water.

As it swims at the waters surface, its unique horizontally divided eye structure enables it to simultaneously survey two worlds - above and below water - for prey. Two barbels projecting from its chin may help it sense insects' vibrations in the water.

Spanning 7 inches with its legs and weighing nearly a quarter-pound, this tarantula is the biggest spider in the world. It hunts big prey (but not larger than itself), including insects, lizards, and frogs. Despite its name, it rarely eats birds. During low water season, the bird-eater lives in a burrow and prowls the forest floor at night. When the rains come, it migrates into the trees. Tree trunks are highways for an assortment of animals travelling up from the water to escape the floods and back down when the waters recede. The tarantula waits in ambush and grabs the food on the move.
Local people roast and eat these spiders, which are high in protein. But they have to be careful when they handle bird-eaters, which can deliver a painful, but nonlethal, venemous bite. The tarantulas als have irritating abdominal hairs that can flick at the eyes and skin of attackers, causing humans to itch and smaller animals to have more serious reacions.

From Amazon Rising: Seasons of the River. Shedd Aquarium.

Well known from the products made from their milky sap, the rubber trees that dot the floodplain forest provide an important source of food to fishes and other animals during the annual floods. During the daily few hours of hot sunlight in the rainy season, the rubber tree's seed capsules mature and explode, sending the seeds flying into the water. Then, throughout the high-water season, the floating seeds are gobbled up by animals capable of cracking or crushing the hard exterior, including large fishes foraging in the flooded forest, and birds and monkeys, which scoop the seeds out of the water. Black piranhas split the seed shells with their razor sharp teeth to eat the kernel inside. Because they digest the seeds, these animals do not act as dispersers.

Seeds that are not eaten can be carried long distances by the flood-waters. and they germinate when the floods recede. Tambaqui love rubber tree seeds so much that they will tear up seedlings to eat the remainder of the nut. Despite all the predation, rubber trees still are among the most common trees in the floodplain forest.

In the 1870's people began harvesting the sap from these trees to make rubber. This caused the Iquitos area of the Amazon basin to grow from 1500 people to nearly 24,000 within a decade. For the next 30 years, Iquitos was at once an area of great wealth and great poverty. The rubber barons became quite wealthy while the local rubber tappers were quite poor. This boom lasted until people began cultivating rubber trees in the Malay Peninsula.

The shimmering 6 foot golden dourada catfish is one of the most beautiful fishes in the world. It also has one of the largest ranges of a strictly freshwater fish: two-thirds of the length of the Amazon River. Biologists believe douradas spawn only in the upper Amazon. In a matter of weeks, the young ride the swift current east 2,700 miles to the mouth of the river, where they find abundant shrimp and small fishes to eat. As they grow they migrate west in large schools.

Douradas are one of the Amazon's principle predators, attacking other fishes in river channels. Unlike most catfishes, which are nocturnal bottom feeders, douradas feed day and night and hunt from near the surface to mid-depth in the river. As they grow to adult size, douradas comtinue the upstream migration, even tackling swift rapids, to reach the Amazon's headwaters at the base of the Andes to spawn. This return trip takes two to three years.

Amazon Rising: Seasons of the River. Shedd Aquarium

More than any other fishes - including piranhas - freshwater stingrays are feared by people who live along the Amazon and its tributaries. Stingrays bury themselves in the sand or mud bottoms of river shallows. Anyone who accidently steps on one stands a good chance of being lashed with the sharp, serrated spiine that grows out of the stingray's tail. The spine carries painful venom attacks the nervous system and heart.

These stingrays' nearest relatives live in the Pacific Ocean. Their ancestors were marine stingrays that lived in a seaway that connected with the Amazon River east of the Andes. Some would have been trapped in teh river's estuary as sedimentation closed the connection. Adaptations to a freshwater habitat included a change in the salt concentrations in their bodies.

Amazon Rising: Seasons of the River. Shedd Aquarium

The arapaima (air uh PYE muh) is one of the largest freshwater fishes in the world, growing up to 10 feet and weighing 330 pounds. An aggressive hunter, it prowls floodplain lakes, gulping fishes and insects. Many fishes have trouble surviving as lakes' temperatures rise and dissolved-oxygen levels fall, but the arapaima thrives because it breathes atmpospheric oxygen through its mouth.

For the arapaima, low-water season is a time of gorging and building fat reserves that will nourish it during the floods, when prey are dispersed through the forest and hard to find. Historically, the arapaima has been hunted throughout its Amazon basin range for its scales and rasoy tongue, which are used for tools, and for its tasty flesh. Due to heavy commercial fishing, arapaimas, especially large ones, have become rare.

From Amazon Rising: Seasons of the River. Shedd Aquarium.

Diminutive annual killifish take refuge in small pools and puddles left on the forest floor as the floodwaters recede. They lay their eggs in the wet, muddy leaf litter. As standing water evaporates, the adult killifish are stranded and die, but their eggs survive on the moist floor and hatch months later when the rains come again. The babies mature rapidly during high water, reproduce and die, completing the species' annual cycle within the river's yearly rhythms.

The green anaconda is the largest snake in South America and one of the world's big three (the other two are Asian and African pythons). Most of the herpetologists, or reptile biologists, consider 26 feet to be the maximum length, but anacondas longer than 15 feet are rare in the wild these days.

If it is not the longest snake species, it is definitely the heaviest. A 26-footer can weigh 400 pounds. This great bulk is put to use catching and subduing prey. Anacondas are constrictors. (They are not venemous). These semi-aquatic snakes lie submerged along stream banks to ambush their prey. When a caiman, peccary, deer, or large bird comes within striking distance, an anaconda lunges, bites, and holds the prey while it throws several coils of its body around the animal. Then the snake constricts, tightening the coils when the prey inhales, quickly suffocating it. Food is swallowed whole. Constrictors do not crush their prey - jagged broken bones would damage their digestive systems.

From Amazon Rising: Seasons of the River. Shedd Aquarium