50 Fun Facts About Tropical

The tropics' northern boundary is named after Cancer. What is the southern one named after?

Both tropics sit at about 23.4 degrees, matching Earth's axial tilt.

At roughly what latitude do the two tropics lie?

The tropics cover almost 40% of Earth's surface and 36% of its land.

About what share of Earth's surface area lies within the tropics?

The tropics are also called the torrid zone.

Which country holds about 60% of the Amazon rainforest?

The forest spans nine nations and holds an estimated 390 billion trees of some 16,000 species.

The Amazon River holds which world record?

Whether it or the Nile is the longest river remains disputed.

Estimates say what share of all species live in rainforests?

Millions of rainforest insects, plants and microbes are thought to be still undiscovered.

The Great Barrier Reef lies off the coast of which Australian state?

With 2,900 reefs and 900 islands it is the biggest single structure made by living organisms and can be seen from space.

Coral bleaching happens when corals lose what?

Stress from warmer water, light or salinity makes them expel the algae and pigments that give them colour.

In a group of clownfish, which individual sits at the top of the dominance hierarchy?

They shelter in sea anemones and, in return, protect and clean them.

A tropical cyclone in the northwestern Pacific is called what?

In the Atlantic and northeastern Pacific the same storm is a hurricane; around 80 to 90 named ones form each year worldwide.

Sailors call the windless zone near the equator where the trade winds meet what?

Meteorologists call it the Intertropical Convergence Zone.

In the Northern Hemisphere tropics, the trade winds blow mainly from which direction?

South of the equator they come from the southeast; both sets flow east to west.

Which country's name literally means "equator" in Spanish?

The Galápagos Islands, which also straddle the equator, are one of its provinces.

Which naturalist studied the endemic species of the Galápagos Islands in the 1830s?

The volcanic archipelago lies about 900 km west of mainland South America.

Which chain of 26 atolls is Earth's lowest-lying country, averaging about 1.5 metres in elevation?

Its highest natural point is just 2.4 metres above the sea.

Borneo, the world's third-largest island, is divided among how many countries?

Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei share it; the Indonesian part is called Kalimantan.

Angel Falls, the world's tallest uninterrupted waterfall at 979 metres, is in which country?

It drops off the Auyán-tepui in Canaima National Park.

Kilimanjaro, the highest mountain in Africa, sits just south of the equator in which country?

It is a dormant volcano and the highest free-standing mountain in the world at 5,895 metres.

Singapore lies roughly how far north of the equator?

That is about 137 km, at the tip of the Malay Peninsula.

Bali is unusual within Indonesia for being the only province with a majority of which religion?

About 86% of Balinese follow Balinese Hinduism.

Tahiti is the largest and most populous island of which overseas collectivity?

Around two-thirds of the collectivity's people live there.

In the wild, pineapples are pollinated mainly by which animal?

That is why Hawaii, once the world's canning capital, banned importing them: pollinated pineapples fill with seeds.

Christopher Columbus first met the pineapple in 1493 on which island?

He took it back to Spain as piña de Indes, "pine of the Indians".

Botanically, what kind of fruit is a banana?

It grows on the largest herbaceous flowering plant in the world, not a tree.

Which banana variety became the dominant Western supermarket banana in the 1960s?

It is a triploid Musa acuminata, threatened by Panama disease and black sigatoka.

The mango is the national fruit of India, Pakistan and which other country?

The mango tree is the national tree of Bangladesh, near where the fruit originated.

The durian is banned from hotels and public transport in Singapore and Bangkok because of what?

Its Latin species name comes from the Italian for civet, whose musk the odour recalled.

Which is the largest of all tree-borne fruits, weighing up to 55 kg?

A single fruit can be 90 cm long.

Dragon fruit grows on what kind of plant?

Its Selenicereus cacti are native to southern Mexico and Central America.

Green papaya contains papain, an enzyme used in kitchens for what?

The fruit was first domesticated in southern Mexico and Central America.

In 1841 an enslaved boy on Réunion discovered how to hand-pollinate which crop?

Edmond Albius's trick freed the orchid from its Mexican pollinators; Madagascar is now a leading grower.

In pre-Hispanic Mesoamerica, cocoa beans were commonly used as what?

The cacao tree was domesticated at least 5,300 years ago in South America before reaching Mesoamerica.

Which country grew about 31% of the world's coffee in 2023, the most of any nation?

The earliest reports of coffee drinking are from Sufis in 15th-century Yemen.

Sugarcane, the raw material of rum, is native to which island?

Rum itself originated on Caribbean sugar plantations in the 17th century.

Which island declared the piña colada its official drink in 1978?

The cocktail depended on Coco López coconut cream, patented there in 1954.

Victor "Trader Vic" Bergeron claimed to have invented the mai tai in 1944 in which city?

Rival Donn Beach of Don the Beachcomber claimed to have made one in 1933.

The mojito, a traditional Cuban punch, is built on white rum, sugar, lime, soda and which herb?

Sugar cane juice was the traditional sweetener.

The daiquiri takes its name from a beach and iron mine near which Cuban city?

An American mining engineer, Jennings Cox, is credited with inventing it around 1898.

The ukulele developed in 1880s Hawaii from small guitars brought by immigrants from which country?

Three Madeiran cabinet makers are credited as the first ukulele builders.

The Hawaiian island of Niʻihau is famous for leis made of what?

Plumeria, orchid and tuberose are the most common flower leis.

Disney's Moana sails in search of which demigod, voiced by Dwayne Johnson?

She must return the heart of the goddess Te Fiti to save her island.

Tom Hanks's desert-island film Cast Away was shot on Monuriki, an island in which country?

His character is a FedEx troubleshooter whose plane goes down in the South Pacific.

Sloths' shaggy coats are home to symbiotic green what, which camouflages them in the canopy?

Some moth species live nowhere else but on sloths.

Poison dart frogs get their toxins mainly from what?

Species that eat a broader diet are dull-coloured and barely toxic.

The bee hummingbird, the smallest bird in the world, is native to which island?

It is about 5 cm long and weighs under 2 grams.

The capybara, native to every South American country except Chile, holds what title?

It is a semi-aquatic relative of the guinea pig.

The jaguar is the biggest cat in the Americas and ranks where in size among the world's cats?

Only the tiger and lion are larger; it is the only Panthera species native to the Americas.

Orangutans survive in the wild only on which two islands?

In the Pleistocene they ranged across Southeast Asia and southern China.

Malaria is spread by the bite of which mosquito?

The parasites are single-celled Plasmodium; symptoms begin 10 to 15 days after the bite.

Of Earth's roughly 3 trillion trees, about what share grow in the tropics and subtropics?

A 2015 estimate put 1.39 trillion trees in the tropics, 0.74 trillion in boreal forests and 0.61 trillion in temperate zones.