60 Fun Facts About Amazon Rainforest

How many countries share the Amazon basin?

Brazil holds by far the largest share, followed by Peru and Colombia.

Roughly what share of the Amazon rainforest lies inside Brazil?

Peru has about 13% and Colombia about 10%; six other countries share the rest.

Roughly how many individual trees are estimated to grow in the Amazon rainforest?

They belong to about 16,000 different species.

What share of all the world's known species is said to live in the Amazon rainforest?

That includes about 2.5 million insect species and some 2,000 birds and mammals.

How much of the world's remaining rainforest does the Amazon represent?

It is the largest and most biodiverse tract of tropical rainforest on Earth.

Francisco de Orellana coined the name 'Amazon' after fighting tribes whose women did what?

He borrowed the name from the warrior women of Greek myth described by Herodotus.

In which year did Orellana become the first European to travel the length of the Amazon River?

His reports of a populous civilisation along the river were long dismissed as exaggeration but now look accurate.

Excavations at Caverna da Pedra Pintada show humans settled the Amazon at least how long ago?

By AD 1250 there were substantial settlements around the forest's edge.

Which British explorer vanished in the 1920s searching the Amazon for a lost civilisation he called the City of Z?

His expeditions were inconclusive, but geoglyphs found since the 1970s support the idea of large pre-Columbian societies.

What gives terra preta, the dark fertile earth found across the Amazon, its black colour?

It is now accepted as a product of indigenous soil management, suggesting much of the forest was shaped by people.

More than half the dust that fertilises the Amazon blows in from a single depression in which desert?

The Bodélé depression in Chad supplies phosphorus that replaces what rain washes out of the soil each year.

Roughly how long has the Amazon rainforest existed?

It probably formed in the Eocene, once the Atlantic was wide enough to deliver a warm, moist climate.

What proportion of the Amazon rainforest had been deforested by 2022?

Scientists warn that at 20-25% the forest could tip into degraded savanna.

What is the primary cause of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon, responsible for about 80% of it?

Soy is a distant second, and a 2006 moratorium banned buying soy from newly cleared land.

Which road, opened in 1972, is blamed for opening the interior of the Amazon to large-scale clearing?

Officially BR-230, it runs about 4,000 km and long stretches are still unpaved.

Which two Brazilian states have suffered the highest levels of Amazon deforestation?

In 2004, a peak year, over 20% of the forests in Mato Grosso were converted to cropland.

What did the 2006 Soy Moratorium ban?

Brazil is now the world's largest soybean producer, and the moratorium is weakening.

Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon fell by about how much in the first ten months of 2023 under Lula?

The drop compared with the same period in 2022 under his predecessor.

Smoke from the 2019 Amazon fires darkened the daytime sky over which city thousands of km away?

NASA confirmed the Brazilian space agency INPE's satellite counts, drawing global attention.

What did President Bolsonaro do after INPE reported an 88% rise in fires in July 2019?

He called the numbers 'fake'; after G7 pressure he sent 44,000 troops to fight the fires.

Which country has been the largest donor to Brazil's Amazon Fund, set up in 2008 to fight deforestation?

Germany and the oil company Petrobras were the next biggest contributors up to 2018.

Chico Mendes, the Amazon activist murdered in 1988, worked in what trade?

His union pioneered the 'empate', a human blockade of rubber reserves threatened with clearing.

In which Brazilian state was Chico Mendes born and killed?

The rancher Darly Alves da Silva, who had bought part of a rubber reserve near Xapuri, was behind the killing.

What was the 'empate' used by Chico Mendes and his fellow rubber tappers?

Their discussions also produced the concept of 'extractive reserves'.

The first Amazon rubber boom ran roughly from 1879 until which year?

A brief second boom came during World War II, from 1942 to 1945.

Who smuggled some 70,000 rubber tree seeds from Brazil to Kew Gardens in 1875?

Only about 4% germinated, but seedlings shipped to Ceylon and Singapore founded Asia's plantations.

Which Irish diplomat documented the enslavement and torture of natives in Peru's Putumayo region in 1910-11?

He had earlier exposed similar atrocities in the Congo.

Manaus's Teatro Amazonas opera house, built with rubber money, opened in which year?

It was built with bricks from Europe, French glass and Italian marble, and stood mostly closed for much of the 20th century.

Which American industrialist founded the rubber plantation town of Fordlândia in 1928?

The town was meant to house 10,000 people; the project failed and was abandoned in 1934.

Where did Ford move his rubber project after abandoning Fordlândia in 1934?

It lay 40 km south of Santarém, where conditions for rubber were better; synthetic rubber then killed demand by 1945.

What is the fungal disease, endemic to the Amazon, that makes rubber plantations there so hard to run?

It is one reason the world's rubber is grown in Asia, far from the fungus.

The Yanomami, about 35,000 people, live in the forest on the border between Brazil and which country?

An entire village lives under one communal roof called a shabono.

What are the small independent gold-diggers who invaded Yanomami land from the 1970s called?

After 1987 the trickle became a full gold rush.

Which Brazilian agency created a Department of Isolated Indians in 1987 to protect uncontacted peoples?

Since 2007 national policy has mandated no contact and self-determination.

The so-called 'Man of the Hole' lived alone in a Rondônia territory and was known for what?

He used them for farming and trapping across 8,000 hectares.

The golden poison frog carries enough toxin to kill roughly how many people?

Its poison comes from its diet of ants, mites and termites; frogs raised in captivity are harmless.

Why are they called poison 'dart' frogs?

Their bright colours warn predators, a trait called aposematism.

Which rodent gnaws open the hard capsule of the Brazil nut, spreading its seeds?

The tree can reach 50 metres and its 2 kg fruit falls like a cannonball.

Brazil nuts are notable for an unusually high content of which micronutrient?

They also contain traces of radium, more than most common foods.

Which country joins Brazil in producing about 87% of the world's Brazil nuts?

World production in 2024 was just under 80,000 tonnes.

The harpy eagle, the Amazon's largest bird of prey, is the national bird of which country?

It snatches live sloths and monkeys from the branches.

The giant water lily Victoria amazonica has floating leaves up to how wide?

Its ribbed underside inspired Joseph Paxton's design for the Crystal Palace.

Victoria amazonica's flowers change from white to reddish pink after being pollinated by what?

The beetles are drawn to the white flower's colour and scent.

Which Brazilian state grows 90% of the açaí crop?

A 2003 'superfood' claim by a celebrity doctor sparked the global boom.

Amazon legend says the pink river dolphin can turn into a handsome man; what is this shapeshifter called?

Another legend says looking one in the eye brings lifelong nightmares.

The Amazon river dolphin is unusual among dolphins because its neck vertebrae are what?

That gives it the flexibility to hunt among flooded forest trees.

The Belo Monte Dam, Brazil's second-largest hydro complex, is built on which Amazon tributary?

Kayapó leader Raoni Metuktire warned of 'a war' over it, and James Cameron made a film opposing it.

What is the Amazon's 'Meeting of Waters' near Manaus?

The dark Rio Negro and the sandy Solimões run alongside each other for kilometres before merging.

About half the Amazon biome's rainfall comes from the Atlantic; where does the other half come from?

The forest effectively recycles its own rain, which is why clearing it can dry it out.

Roughly how many indigenous groups in the Amazon remain largely isolated?

Indigenous peoples make up 9% of the region's 30 million inhabitants across 3,344 recognised territories.

Which head-shrinking Amazonian people fought long wars on the Ecuador-Peru borderlands?

The Shuar are the best-known Jivaroan group.

The Xingu Indigenous Park, Brazil's first national park for indigenous people, was created in which year?

The Villas-Bôas brothers campaigned for it with the support of explorer Cândido Rondon.

Manaus was given what special status in 1967 to attract industry to the interior?

The military government worried about a 'demographic gap' in the interior.

Roughly what share of the Amazon rainforest area is affected by mining?

Demand for tin, manganese and copper has drawn many illegal miners.

The Amazon is often said to make a quarter of Earth's oxygen; what is its actual net oxygen contribution?

The famous statistic really refers to oxygen turnover; the forest's respiration roughly cancels its photosynthesis.

In a typical year the Amazon absorbs about 1.5 Gt of CO2; how much did it release in the 2010 drought?

The 2010 drought hit some 3 million km², compared with 1.9 million km² in the 2005 'once-in-a-century' drought.

A 2001 study found how many tree species in just a quarter square kilometre of Ecuadorian rainforest?

The whole region is thought to hold about 16,000 tree species, and each hectare around a billion invertebrates.

Which tribe in southern Suriname uses handheld GPS and Google Earth to map its ancestral lands?

Most Amazon tribes lack clearly defined boundaries, which makes their territories easier targets for commercial ventures.

A 2023 World Bank report put Brazil's annual economic losses from deforestation at roughly what?

That is about seven times the value of all commodities produced through deforestation, prompting calls for a forest-friendly economy.

By what percentage did the Colombian government say Amazon deforestation fell in the first nine months of 2023?

One policy credited is paying local residents to conserve the forest.