Amazon Rainforest…

A movie named ‘Piranha’ was screened around August… well, I not really interest on this kind ‘meat feeding’ fish… ^^ the things I wanna let u guys know is some facts about piranha hometown – the Amazon forests... I’m sure everyone got heard a pieces of news about this famous rainforest directly or indirectly… Amazon river, Amazon rainforest, new species found in Amazon and so on and so forth… so, I gather some information from the web… lets look at some fun facts about this.. relax before we start our final exam and thesis presentation for those final sem coursemate… XD

1st… Amazon is the largest rainforest in the world… how large is it?? The rainforest spread over eight South American countries, i.e. Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, French Guiana, Guyana, Peru, Suriname and Venezuela. If Amazon is a country, it will be the ninth largest in the world… they cover 6 million square kilometers of land (for your information, Malaysia is only ranking 65 for land area coverage^^)…

2nd… Nile is the longest river in the world… Amazon River is the second… The length of the Amazon River is more than 4000 miles where it is originated from Andes and end up at Atlantic Ocean. The water discharge rate is around 3.4 million gallons per minutes… the Amazon has more than 1100 tributaries and 17 of them are longer than 1000 miles… 2/3 of the fresh water in the world can be found in the rivers, streams and tributaries associated with Amazon River...(Malaysia longest river – Rajang River is approximate 350 miles)…

3rd… Amazon Rainforest has been described as the ‘Lungs of Earth’ because it provides the essential environmental world service of continuously recycling carbon dioxide into oxygen. More than 20% of the world oxygen is produced in the Amazon rainforest… but now, deforestation is getting serious… this cause a lots of scientist , environmentalist, biologist etc started panic… :(

4th… fauna… Guys, how many species of ant can you found in your home?? In Amazon, 43 species of ant can be found in 1 single tree.. amazing is it?? Haha :) More than half of the world’s estimated 10 million species of plants, animals and insects live in the tropical rainforest. The bird species native to the Amazon rainforest constitute approximately 1/3 of the total bird population on the planet. Some of the animals native to this rainforest include Jaguar (a bit look like leopard, but definitely different^^), spider monkey (this creature has long limbs and tail, live in the upper layer of rainforest and forage of the canopy, from 25 – 30 m.. wow~~ sort like living in high rise condos… haha), Anaconda (another favourite topic for movie >.<), Amazon pink river dolphin (personally, I love this… thinking is it they stay together with piranha… @@) and many others… 2500 species of fish… 1500 species of birds… 1800 species of butterflies… 4 types of big cats… 200 species of mosquitoes…

5th… flora… Estimate more than 40,00 plants species in the Amazon… 50 – 200 different trees species per hectare can be found in Amazon… Those plants have numerous medical uses with many of the possible medical uses are still undiscovered (around 90% of the plants used by native tribes have not been studied by scientist for more possible medical purposes)... Besides, more than 3000 fruits growing in the Amazon; native tribes use more than 1500 of them, but only 200 are grown for outside use…

6th… well.. not only flora and fauna… human also… around 250,000 Amazon natives are believed to be living in the rainforest and they comprise 215 ethic groups speaking 170 different languages… about 50 native Amazon tribes living deep in the rainforest have never had any contact with civilized world (sort like the lost world… haha^^)

Thought of just end the article here… but I think should share this pieces of info also…

As I said just now.. deforestation is getting serious in Amazon rainforest… between 2004 and 2005, the mean annual deforestation rate in the Amazon had increased up to 13,900 miles per year.. If this rate is continues, the forest cover of the Amazon will reduced by almost the half in the next 2 decades around 2020… this means that numerous of flora and fauna species will be invariable driven to extinction…. The rainforest covered around 14% of the surface of the earth at one point of time, now have been reduced to a 6%... within this 6%, the Amazon rainforest holds more than half of the 10 million species in the world… it took millions of years for these rainforest to evolve… but at the rate at which we are destroying them… they will not last for more then a few decades… how sad of this… haizz….

check this for more information…
http://www.ehow.com/about_5431539_funny-amazon-rain-forest.html
http://www.buzzle.com/articles/amazon-rainforest-facts.html
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/20_facts_about_the_amazon_rainforest
http://www.rainforest-facts.com/amazon-rainforest-facts.html