LIVING RAINFORESTS

"...if the EYE attempts to follow the flight of a gaudy butter-fly, it is arrested by some strange tree or or fruit; if WATCHING an insect one forgets it in the stranger flower it is crawling over...."

This entry from Charles Darwin's diary captures, the beauty of life pulsating through rainforests. Brightly coloured, long-tailed parrots flying through trees, toucans perched on high branches, gibbons swinging through the canopy, lively chattering of monkeys, loud morning calls of orangutans, nocturnal cacophony of frogs and bird songs echoing through the forest might delight your senses of sight and sound, if you ever hike through a rainforest! But before you adventure into this treasure trove of nature which houses more than 50% of all the world's plant and animals species, here's something about some of the wild residents you might come across in a rainforest...

Rainforests provide shelter to millions of life forms, some yet to be discovered. One rainforest inhabitant that wasn't discovered until the twentieth century is the OKAPI. This animal bears striped markings similar to the zebra, but is most closely related to the giraffe! The rainforests of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in central Africa, is the only home of this rare and unusual creature!

Another interesting rainforest dweller  is the HOATZIN , a pheasant-sized, tropical bird found in the Amazon and the Orinoco delta in South America. Also known as the stinkbird , the hoatzin is notable for its unconventional diet. Uniquely among birds, hoatzins are folivores, or leaf-eaters. Surprisingly, in digestive matters, these birds have more in common with cattle and sheep than with their feathered relatives!

One of the world's well-known rainforest dwellers is the MACAW; a large long-tailed parrot with brightly coloured plumage. Native to Central and South America, most macaws are named after their colouring-- the green-winged macaw, the scarlet macaw and the red-fronted macaw to name a few.