Children of the Amazon

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Children of the Amazon: Tell Me About It

Tell Me About Photo #1 -- Just another planet?

From space, the earth might look like any other planet. But, thankfully, our amazing home has something the others, at least those in our solar system, apparently don't: complex forms of life! And lots and lots of them, too: so many, in fact, that scientists haven't even counted them all yet. And, of all earth's many habitats, rain forests are where the greatest variety of life forms can be found (including one curious form complex enough to be able to read these words).

Tell Me About Photo #2 -- Green is the color of....

... the rain forest! But that's only because green is the color of chlorophyll. But that's only because chlorophyll traps the green rays of the light spectrum. But that's only because the sun gives off light which includes green rays. So, the source of all that rain forest green is actually the sun. Hmm - and you thought the sun was yellow!

Chlorophyll is the stuff in plant leaves that traps the green rays of the light spectrum produced by the sun. Once trapped, the leaf takes the light energy and converts it into food, which explains why humans and many other living creatures like to eat plants. Even meat-eaters benefit from the process, since they eat plant-eaters. And so goes the food chain - all because of green. Hmm - and you thought green was just a ho-hum regular old color!

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Tell Me About Photo #3 -- One of many Amazon tributaries - one small part of the Amazon river system.

The Amazon River is the biggest river system in the world (though the Nile River is longer). A river system includes one large river plus all the smaller rivers that flow into it, plus all the smaller rivers that flow into those, plus all the smaller rivers that flow into those, and so on and so on. Are you a good sleuth? See if you can figure this one out? A watershed is an area of land that drains into a river system. So the Amazon rain forest, plus one side of all the mountains that surround it, are the watershed of the Amazon river system. Why is only one side of the mountains part of the watershed?

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Tell Me About Photo #4 -- Children on the steps of their stilted house.

Sorry, you can't come in! If you're wet or furry or have less than or more than two legs, that is. Most Amazon rain forest houses have stilts - to keep unwelcome intruders underfoot. And what would those unwelcome intruders be? Well, water is the main one. Many Amazon rain forest rivers flood annually. Since rain forest people have to build their houses near rivers, though, for food (fish) and transportation (canoe travel), they build them on stilts.

In Ecuador, where the rain forest land is closer to the Andes mountains and therefore higher than the rest of the Amazon, flooding is not as much of a threat, but the people there still build their houses on stilts. The unwelcome intruders in this case: animals. The Amazon has the greatest concentration of ants, tarantulas, snakes, lizards, rodents, bats and other such creatures in all the world. How would you like all of those neighbors knocking on your door? (Mind you, many of them still make it in despite the stilts!)

Tell Me About Photo #5 -- A tree-covered plain.

The Amazon rain forest is a vast tree-covered plain that stretches from the base of the Andes mountains in northwestern South America to the Atlantic Ocean on the other side of the continent. The plain slowly slopes downward from the Andes to the Atlantic, so all the rain drains west to east. Picture a large four-legged table, one side slightly higher than the other. If you poured some water on the high side, it would flow towards the low side due to gravity. Now add billions of trees and thousands of rivers and you've got an idea of what the Amazon is like.

Tell Me About Photo #6 -- An Andes mountain stream, falling to the forested plain below.

The great Amazon River starts at the top of the great Andes Mountains, which tower over the great Pacific Ocean on the western coast of South America. Melting snow trickles down the peaks of these natural skyscrapers forming streams which tumble turbulently, sometimes as gushing waterfalls, down the eastern slopes, settling into slow-moving rivers as they reach the massive tree-covered plain below. These rivers eventually flow together to form the Amazon River which crosses the entire South American continent, collecting more and more water as it goes, and empties into the great Atlantic Ocean on the opposite coast from where it started. Now that's a great journey - from beginning to end!

Tell Me About Photo #7 -- A vine-laden, buttressed, Amazon monster - the kapok.

The kapok tree, also known as the ceiba or the silk cotton tree, produces a silky fiber sometimes used in life preservers. But, in the rain forest, it's much more than a life preserver: it's a life provider. That's because its branches serve as the home to thousands of other rain forest plant and animal species from nearly all branches of the scientific classification tree.

Here's a challenge: draw a picture of both trees (the kapok and the scientific classification tree) research animal and plant species which may live in the branches of a kapok tree, and determine which branches of the scientific classification tree these plants and animals came from.

Tell Me About Photo #8 -- The beautiful symmetry of an Amazon butterfly.

The insect population of the Amazon rain forest is so diverse and uncharted that scientists estimate there are thousands of unidentified flying, crawling and burrowing species at large. So, for fun, let's say this one has never been named. What name would you give it? Can you create your own butterfly species? Draw it, color it and name it. Why is your butterfly species unique among all others?

Tell Me About Photo #9 -- Sun conures, a.k.a. 'love birds,' a.k.a. parrots.

What do parakeets, macaws, cockatoos, lories, lovebirds, keas, conures, lorikeets, budgerigars and conures all have in common? Lots - since they're all members of the parrot family. Of course, as in human families, there is plenty of room for differences. These birds range in size from 4 inches (pygmy parrots) to 40 inches (hyacinth macaws), just to give one example.

Here's a more challenging question? What do the hands of primates and the feet of parrots have in common? Fingernails, you say? Well, we'll give you that one (since claws and fingernails are pretty much the same thing), but we were thinking of opposability. Primates like humans and apes have opposable thumbs which means we have thumbs that can be placed opposite our fingers. This gives us much greater digital dexterity (ability to do lots of neat stuff with our hands) than other animals. It allows us to write with a pencil, play a guitar, throw a baseball, knit a sweater, paint a masterpiece and countless other tasks that polar bears, crocodiles, and elephants just can't seem to handle (pun intended).

Parrots don't have opposable thumbs, of course, but they do have opposable toes: two of their claws on each foot point forward and two of them point backwards. So, they have much greater digital dexterity than other birds and can do things that blue jays, flamingoes and kori bustards just don't have the talons for (pun intended).

Tell Me About Photo #10 -- A spider monkey swinging from its fifth arm.

Spider monkeys are called 'spider monkeys' because they have long, gangly legs, arms and tails that resemble the long gangly legs of some spiders. Some fuzzy spiders, on the other hand, like tarantulas, resemble the fuzzy spider monkeys (so, should we call them 'monkey spiders?') But, the similarities between the two end with their gangly fuzziness. Spiders, of course, being arachnids, have eight limbs; and spider monkeys, of course, being new world primates, have.... five! Well, sort of. Besides the four limbs that other mammals have, spider monkeys (and other Amazon rain forest monkeys) have prehensile tails. The word prehensile refers to their ability to grasp and hold things with their tails. They can even grab fruit and bring it to their mouths with their tails. Now, that's a handy trick!

Come to think of it, spider monkeys have lots more than just five limbs - if you count all the tree limbs they swing around on all day! Now, why do you suppose arms, legs and tree branches are called limbs? Do humans have trunks, roots and branches, too? They do if you think about it. Look up 'trunk' in the dictionary. What part of the human body does it refer to? What about ancestral roots and the branches of a family tree? And then, of course, there are the fruits of one's labor... Sometimes humans get in trouble for 'barking up the wrong tree' - even though barking would be more likely to come from dogs, and cats would be more likely to go up a tree. Hmmm.

What human organ most resembles tree bark in function and location?

Tell Me About Photo #11 -- 'Oh, it's very good to see you! I was hoping you'd show up for dinner:' a lurking anaconda.

Anacondas, their African cousins, pythons, and the cousins they share the Amazon rain forest with, boas, are all members of the constrictor family. The word 'constrictor' refers to the way they kill their prey - but not to what happens to them after they eat it! 'To constrict' means 'to make smaller or narrower by squeezing,' and when a constrictor does that to its prey, the result is asphyxiation. But, after that, the constrictor, not heavily into chewing, swallows its prey whole. Since the prey is often much bigger around than the snake that is swallowing it, the constrictor does the opposite of constricting - it expands! All in all, it makes for a rather lumpy meal.

Here's something to think about... Imagine you are about 20 feet long and one foot in diameter and you are about to sit down, as it were, for a fine meal of peccary. The plump specimen you have managed to squeeze the life out of is three feet long and two feet in diameter (and has two long sharp tusks besides). Since it's customary for you not to chew and you have no arms or hands which you could use to divide the peccary into nice bite-sized morsels, how do you propose to get the bloody thing down your throat?

Assuming this scenario makes you an anaconda, you haven't the slightest worry. First, the hinge for your mouth is at the back of your head, so you're quite talented at opening wide and saying 'ah.' Second, you can dislocate your jaw, making even more space for your food to pass through; and, third, your throat is made of cartilage, allowing it to stretch according to the size of your meal. And, as for those tusks, they're nothing the acidic gastric juices in your digestive track won't dissolve like melting butter.

Tell Me About Photo #12 -- A baby caiman.

Caiman are the South American cousins of North American alligators and African crocodiles. They are a little smaller and generally a little more mild-mannered, but we don't recommend you try the stunt in this picture at home. The most likely time for a caiman to attack a human is when the human tries to catch its young. Otherwise, they prefer fish, birds and smaller mammals that wade into the water.

Tell Me About Photo #13 -- Carefully removing a hook from the jaws of a piranha.

Beware the jaws of the piranha! (Let alone its teeth.) The dreaded chisel-toothed, iron-jawed, blood-thirsty piranha will tear through your flesh like a paper shredder through recycled magazines the moment you put your big toe in Amazon waters, rendering you a mere skeleton in a matter of seconds. Right? Wrong!!! Much of what you hear about piranha is grossly exaggerated. Yes, they do have sharp teeth; yes, they do have powerful jaws; and, yes, some of them do eat flesh. But, they almost never ever eat humans. In fact, most kinds of piranha only eat animals that are already dead; some only eat fruit; and only one, the red-bellied piranha, will commonly attack a living animal - usually one that is much smaller than itself, like a frog or another fish.

Still, it would be wise to heed the warning, 'Beware the jaws of the piranha,' especially if you are fishing for them. People catch and eat thousands of thousands of piranha every day in the Amazon rain forest, often using meat, snails or pieces of other piranha for bait, fishing line with metal wire attached to the end (so the piranha won't bite through it) and a long shafted hook (so it's less dangerous to take the hook out after catching a piranha). Piranha rarely eat people, but they frequently take a chunk of finger from careless fishermen before they get eaten by people.

Tell Me About Photo #14 -- Here's peeping at you kid: a tree frog.

Tree frogs, like other 'round the clock rain forest noisemakers (crickets and birds) do not limit their range to the rain forest. Chances are you can hear them peeping in your own neighborhood at the right time of day in the right time of year. There are many different varieties. Some of those varieties, though, like certain poison arrow (or poison dart) frogs are only found in the rain forest.

Most tree frogs are brown so they blend in with the bark and decaying leaves, or green so they blend in with the foliage, but poison arrow frogs don't need that kind of protection; after all, they've got poison. But, just as much as the lethal substance in their skin, poison arrow frogs depend on their bright colors and the memory of the animal that might try to eat them. Upon easily noticing a poison arrow frog due to its bright colors, a naive predator might think, 'Hmm, now that was easy to spot!' but, upon tasting it, due to its poison, might spit it back out thinking, 'Yuk! That was nasty!' Later, when the wised-up predator encounters the poison arrow frog again, it will conclude, 'Aha, I'm not falling for those flashy colors again! Give me the harder to find, camouflaged variety any day!'

Tell Me About Photo #15 -- A stealthy black jaguar.

But jaguars are spotted! Ah, yes, you're right. But jaguars come in two varieties: golden orange with black floret spots and black with black floret spots. The black with black spots variety is very rare. While they do have the same spots as the golden race, those spots blend in with the the black fur and are difficult to see. Since jaguars of both varieties often hunt at night, black is the ultimate camouflage.

Now that you've got that straight about jaguars, don't confuse them with their spotted cousins who live in Africa: the leopard, which also has a rare black variety, sometimes called a panther; or with their tawny unspotted American cousin, the mountain lion - also sometimes called a panther, or a cougar, or a catamount, or a mountain cat, or a painter, or a puma!

And if you really want to be enlightened - or confused as the case may be - the English word 'puma' (which is another name for 'mountain lion') comes from the Quichua language of western South America. Some Quichua speakers live in the Andes mountains where pumas also live, while others live in the Amazon rain forest where jaguars also live. But both call the large cat that lives in their area 'puma!'

Tell Me About Photo #16 -- A rainbow in its bill: the keel-billed toucan.

That's an overdue bill, all right. And, as is the case with all other birds, its primary function is get food and channel it to the mouth. Toucans sometimes do the channeling part by tossing their food up in the air and gulping it down their throats. Sometimes they perch on a branch with other toucans, pass the food, bill to bill, from one to another - and then toss it up and gulp it down. Sounds like a fun way to eat - but we would caution against trying it at the dinner table!

Which of the following words would you guess best describes the toucans eating style?

(Clown jester is not one of the choices, though the bright colored suit and the juggling act may seem to fit that category. The real choices are...)

a) herbivorous
b) carnivorous, or
c) omnivorous

While they are famous fruit eaters, as the most celebrated star of their lot, Toucan Sam, demonstrates, they also eat meat, so the correct answer is c) omnivorous. In fact, they are frugivorous, insectivorous, lizardivorous and, as treacherous as it may seem, baby birdivorous (that is, they snatch and eat hatchlings from other birds' nests). So much for Sam's good reputation! (By the way, besides omnivorous, frugivorous and insectivorous, don't try using the -ivorous words in this paragraph on a science exam - or you might be very upsetivorous when you get your grade.)

Tell Me About Photo #17 -- Canopy profile.

The canopy is the roof of the rain forest, a layer of tree branches and leaves - and the countless things living on them - that stretches on and on and on, like a sea of waving green. Just as it is relatively calm under the sea compared to at the surface, it is calm under the canopy. The canopy buffers the rain forest floor from the harsh elements that come from above - wind, rain and sun. Any wind that reaches the floor is usually reduced to a puff; any rain that makes it is reduced to a trickle; and any sun to a dapple.

So, the daily rain forest weather report would be quite different for the floor dwellers than for the canopy dwellers... "And now our local meteorologist, Barry Clowdy, with today's forecast. Barry...." "Yes, thank you, Alotta. Today, monkeys, sloths, toucans and other canopy dwellers can expect a powerfully hot sun in the morning, giving way to strong winds and torrential rainfall in the afternoon hours. Ocelots, armadillos, agoutis, stray humans, and other floor dwellers, on the other hand, can make plans for lots of humid, trapped heat and stuffy shade, with an occasional puff, trickle or dapple. And that's it for the rain forest weather. Now, back to our sturdy anchor, Alotta Treeze....."

Tell Me About Photo #18 -- The smile: a universal language.

What language(s) do you speak? Bety, can speak (at least some of) four languages: Shuar, Quichua, Spanish and English. Well, come to think of it, make that five. People - and most animals for that matter - incessantly babble on, so to speak, in a nonverbal language that often communicates messages just as clearly as verbal language. We're talking about body language, of course. When a student raises her hand in class after the teacher asks a question, for example, she is clearly stating (nonverbally), "I think I know the answer and I would like you to call on me."

Some examples of body language can have different meanings in different parts of the world. In various countries, for example, raising two fingers can mean 'peace,' 'victory,' or 'two party democracy.' Of course, it can also mean, 'Give me two donuts, please!' But, some examples of body language are universal - like the smile. How would you translate what is being communicated when a person smiles into words?

Tell Me About Photo #19 -- Looking for fruit in a forest playground.

What things come to mind when you think of the word Christmas? Anticipation and excitement, gifts, sweet things to eat, joy, Santa Claus? It's sort of like that for rain forest children during the season when certain fruits become ripe. Anticipation and excitement swell in the children just as the fruits ripen daily on the branches. The gifts, of course, from nature, are the fruits themselves - and, once they're ripe, there's nothing in all the wide world, at least to these youngsters, that tastes sweeter. So, naturally, the weeks of ripe fruit bring immeasurable joy to heart of every rain forest child.

As for the chubby fellow with the red and white suit: well, to date, there have been no reindeer spottings (lots of rain; lots of deer; but no reindeer!). But, if Santa ever got a taste of that delicious fruit, it's a sure thing he'd visit more often - though a wardrobe change would be advisable.

Tell Me About Photo #20 -- Ivan, going for a spin on his bike.

Ivan is Bety and Sandra's older brother. He's in sixth grade (or was when the picture was taken). Although you may not be able to tell by looking at him, he is a 'minority' in his village. His family is Shuar, but the people of the village are Quichua. The Quichua people of his village do not allow people of different ethnic groups to settle in the village, but since Ivan's father is a teacher at the high school, their family is allowed to live on the high school compound, which is a little ways outside the village center. A few other non-Quichua teachers and their families live on the high school compound, too, including people of Spanish descent, mestizos (people of mixed Spanish and Native American ancestry) and an American English teacher. Students attending the high school are Quichua, Shuar, Secoya, Siona, Huaorani, mestizo and Spanish-Ecuadorian.

Actually, those of different ethnic groups are not the only people restricted from settling in the village where Ivan lives. Other Quichua people who were not born there or do not marry a man who was born there are not allowed to settle there either, unless, given some exceptional circumstances, the community determines that they can. A woman who marries a man from outside the village typically goes to the man's village to live, but, of course, can return for a visit when she wishes.

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