Amazon rainforest

28 to explore

• Watch 3D Animal Amazon milk frog The Amazon milk frog is a large tree frog that lives high in the treetops of the rainforest in northeastern South America. It is active at night, has big golden eyes, and lays its eggs in pools of rainwater trapped in holes in trees, where its tadpoles grow up.
• Watch Animal Amazon river dolphin The Amazon river dolphin, or boto, is the largest river dolphin. Many adults are pink. It lives only in fresh water, in the Amazon and Orinoco river basins of South America, and its bendy neck and big flippers let it twist between tree trunks in flooded forests as it hunts fish using sound.
• Watch Animal Arapaima The arapaima is one of the biggest freshwater fish in the world, longer than a grown-up is tall. It lives in the warm, slow rivers and flooded lakes of the Amazon, and it must swim up to the surface to gulp air every few minutes.
• Watch Animal Army ant Army ants hunt together in giant swarms and never build a permanent nest. This page is about the best-studied kind, Eciton burchellii, of Central and South American forests. Each night of its traveling phase the colony moves, and the workers link their legs to build a living camp around their queen and young.
• Watch 3D Animal Blue-and-yellow macaw The blue-and-yellow macaw is a large parrot of South America and Panama. It is bright blue on top and golden yellow underneath, with a green forehead and a white face lined with black. It lives near swamps and rivers, cracks nuts with its strong black beak and stays with one mate for life.
• Watch Animal Boa constrictor The boa constrictor is a large, heavy snake of South America. Of all the boas, it lives in the greatest variety of places, from rainforests to dry scrub and farms. It catches food by squeezing, it has no venom, and mothers give birth to live babies.
• Watch Animal Brown-throated sloth The brown-throated sloth is a three-toed sloth of the rainforests of Central and South America. It eats leaves, saves energy by moving very slowly, and its shaggy fur can turn green with tiny algae that grow in it.
• Watch Animal Cane toad The cane toad is a large, warty toad that comes from the Amazon and Guianas of South America. People carried it to many warm places, including Australia in 1935, hoping it would eat beetles in sugarcane fields. It did not solve that problem, but it spread fast, and its poison harms native animals that try to eat it.
• Watch 3D Animal Capybara The capybara is the largest rodent alive, a giant cousin of the guinea pig. It lives in groups beside rivers, lakes and marshes in South America, grazes on grass and water plants, and dives into the water to stay cool and safe.
• Watch Animal Common blue morpho The common blue morpho is a large butterfly of the forests of Mexico, Central America and South America. The tops of its wings flash bright blue, but the undersides are brown with big eyespots, which camouflage it when it lands with its wings closed. Adults sip juice from rotting fruit instead of nectar.
• Watch Animal Common vampire bat Common vampire bats are small bats of warm parts of Mexico, Central and South America. They feed only on blood, mostly from livestock such as cattle, horses and pigs. They can walk, run and hop on the ground, and they share food with their roost mates.
• Watch 3D Animal Dyeing poison frog The dyeing poison frog lives in the rainforests of Suriname, Guyana, French Guiana and nearby Brazil. It comes in many dazzling patterns of blue, yellow, black and white, which warn predators about poison in its skin. Fathers carry their tadpoles on their backs to little pools of water.
• Watch Animal Electric eel The electric eel is a long, snake-shaped fish from South America that makes its own electricity. It uses weak pulses to find its way and talk, and strong ones to catch food. Despite its name, it is not a true eel at all.
• Watch Animal Giant anteater The giant anteater is the biggest of the four kinds of anteater. It has no teeth at all, but its sticky tongue, about 60 centimeters long, flicks in and out up to 150 times a minute to slurp up ants and termites. Babies ride on their mothers' backs.
• Watch Animal Giant otter The giant otter is the longest otter in the world, up to about 1.8 meters from nose to tail. It lives in the rivers and lakes of South America in noisy family groups that hunt fish together by day. It is endangered, and people are working to protect it.
• Watch Animal Goliath birdeater The Goliath birdeater is a giant tarantula from the rainforests of northern South America. With legs spreading about 28 centimeters and a weight of up to about 170 grams, it is described as the heaviest spider in the world. Despite its name, it eats mostly worms and insects, not birds.
• Watch 3D Animal Green anaconda The green anaconda is one of the largest snakes on Earth. This olive-green, spotted boa lives in the rivers, swamps and flooded grasslands of northern South America, where it lies hidden in shallow water with only its eyes and nose showing.
• Watch 3D Animal Green iguana The green iguana is a large lizard from the forests of Central and South America. It climbs high into trees to bask in the sun, eats leaves, flowers and fruit, and dives into rivers to get away from danger. It can grow to about 2 meters long, tail included.
• Watch 3D Animal Harpy eagle Harpy eagles are among the largest and most powerful eagles in the world. They live in the lowland rainforests of Central and South America, where they hunt sloths and monkeys in the treetops. Forest loss and shooting have made them rare.
• Watch Animal Hercules beetle The Hercules beetle is one of the largest beetles in the world: the biggest males can reach 18 centimeters, horns included. It lives in rainforests from southern Mexico to Bolivia and on a few Caribbean islands. Its huge grubs spend more than a year eating rotting wood before they turn into beetles.
• Watch Animal Hoatzin The hoatzin is a strange and wonderful bird of the Amazon and Orinoco rivers. It eats mostly leaves and digests them slowly with the help of bacteria, a bit like a cow. Its chicks have claws on their wings that help them climb back up through the branches.
• Watch 3D Animal Jaguar The jaguar is the largest cat in North and South America. It lives near rivers and swamps, swims well, and has such a powerful bite that it can crack a turtle's shell. Most jaguars live in the Amazon rainforest.
• Watch Animal Leafcutter ant Leafcutter ants are farmers. Workers cut pieces of leaves, carry them home along busy trails and use them to grow a fungus garden underground, and the fungus is their food. This page is about one well-known kind, Atta cephalotes, which lives in Central and South America in giant nests of hundreds of thousands to millions of ants.
• Watch Animal Neon tetra The neon tetra is a tiny fish, about as long as a quarter is wide, with a glowing blue stripe and a bright red patch. In the wild it lives in clear and dark-water forest streams of the western Amazon. It is also one of the most popular aquarium fish in the world.
• Watch Animal Ocelot The ocelot is a medium-sized wild cat of the Americas, from southern Texas to northern Argentina. Its golden coat has chains of dark-edged spots, and no two ocelots look alike. It hunts mostly at night, catching mice, rats, lizards and birds, and it needs thick plants to hide in.
• Watch Animal Red-bellied piranha The red-bellied piranha is a silver fish with a red belly that lives in rivers, creeks and floodplain ponds of South America. It has a famous reputation, but experts say the danger to people is greatly exaggerated: piranhas mostly eat fish, insects, snails and plants.
• Watch 3D Animal Scarlet macaw The scarlet macaw is a large parrot of the rainforests of Mexico, Central America and South America. It is famous for its bright red, yellow and blue feathers. It cracks hard nuts with its powerful beak, flies in noisy flocks and stays with one mate for life.
• Watch 3D Animal Toco toucan The toco toucan is the biggest toucan, and its huge orange bill is the largest of any bird compared with its body. The bill is light and hollow. It is a tool for picking fruit, and scientists have found it also works like a radiator that lets out body heat. Tocos live in open woodlands and savannas of South America.