🌳 The Amazon Rainforest

What you’ll learn

1. The Biggest Forest on EarthLocate the Amazon rainforest in South America and grasp how large it is and how many countries it covers.The Amazon is the largest rainforest on Earth, spreading about 6 million square kilometres across nine countries in South America. More than half of it sits in Brazil. It is so big that it holds over half of all the rainforest left in the world — a single green blanket you could see from space.
2. The Mightiest RiverDescribe the Amazon River as the world's largest by the amount of water it carries, and name a creature that lives in it.Running through the forest is the Amazon River, the mightiest river in the world by the sheer amount of water it moves. It carries roughly a fifth of all the river water that reaches the world's oceans — more than the next several biggest rivers put together. Its waters are home to surprises, like the pink river dolphin.
3. A Forest Built in LayersName the four layers of the rainforest and explain how sunlight is shared differently at each level.The rainforest is stacked in four layers, like floors of a tall building. The emergent layer holds the tallest treetops in bright sun, the canopy is a thick green roof where most animals live, the shady understory sits below, and the dark forest floor is where leaves rot and feed everything. Each layer gets a different amount of light, so different plants and animals live at each level.
4. One in Ten of All Living ThingsUnderstand that about one in ten known species on Earth lives in the Amazon, and give examples of its animals.The Amazon is the most crowded-with-life place on Earth: about one in every ten known kinds of living things is found here, including some 1,294 kinds of birds, 427 mammals, and thousands of fish and plants. From scarlet macaws to tiny bright poison frogs, this staggering variety — called biodiversity — is what makes the forest so precious.
5. Who Eats WhomTrace how energy passes from plants to plant-eaters to meat-eaters in a rainforest food web, with the jaguar as top predator.Every living thing in the forest is connected through eating. Plants make their own food from sunlight; plant-eaters like insects and monkeys eat the plants; and predators like the jaguar eat other animals. These links form a food web. Because everything is joined, removing one animal can ripple out and affect many others.
6. The Forest Makes Its Own RainExplain how rainforest trees release water vapour that forms new rain, keeping the forest wet.The Amazon helps make its own rain. Trees pull water up from the soil and breathe it out of their leaves as invisible vapour. That vapour rises, gathers into clouds, and falls again as rain over the forest. The water goes round and round — from soil to tree to cloud to rain — which is why cutting down the trees can also dry out the sky above them.
7. Why the Amazon Matters to EveryoneExplain how the Amazon helps clean the air and provides useful things like medicines, and why caring for it matters.The Amazon matters far beyond South America. Its countless trees pull in carbon dioxide and release oxygen, helping to clean the world's air, and its plants have given us many medicines. Because so much life depends on this one forest, protecting it — and not cutting it down too fast — helps keep the whole planet healthy.

Questions this course answers

Grounded in trusted sources

• Amazon rainforest area (~6 million km2 of forest within a ~7 million km2 basin), the nine countries it spans, Brazil holding 58.4%, 'one in ten known species', and species counts (16,000 tree species; 1,294 birds; 427 mammals; 2,200 fishes; 428 amphibians; 40,000 plant species): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_rainforest
• Amazon River figures — average discharge about 215,000–230,000 m3/s, carrying roughly 20% of all river water that flows into the world's oceans, length about 6,400 km (a record disputed with the Nile), and greater flow than the next several largest rivers combined: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_River

Every Wunder lesson is built from real, reputable sources — never invented.

Related Science courses