We explain what the jungle is and how it differs from deserts. Jungle animals and vegetation. The Amazon rainforest.
What is the jungle?
When we talk about jungle, jungle or tropical rainforest, we are fundamentally referring to a bioclimatic landscape, characterized by its frequent rainfall its warm climate and abundant vegetation, organized at different levels of height.
However, there is no clear definition that distinguishes or reconciles these different terms, used more or less arbitrarily, usually with climatic additions such as tropical forest or equatorial forest, depending on their geographical location.
Almost two-thirds of the planet's total biomass is found in the different jungles of the planet, which represents incredible biodiversity: millions of plant and animal species, many yet to be discovered by humanity.
The jungles are also the largest centers of oxygen generation. of the world (they produce almost 40% of it) and ecological refuges that even house pre-modern human communities, such as the Yanomami tribes in the Amazon.
However, large jungle areas of the Earth are under siege by logging or paper industries, or by the constant expansion of the urban surface of our large cities.
Activities such as illegal mining (the garimpeiros Brazilians, for example, in the Amazon) also generate an enormous environmental impact, much more drastic and accelerated, due to the use of polluting substances such as mercury, and extraction methods that deteriorate the soil semi-permanently.
In the 1990s there was an increase in the pace of global deforestation, reducing the area covered by forests and jungles from 14% of the total land area to just 6%, losing an annual average of about 58,000 square kilometers. If this rate of plant destruction continues, by 2050 they will have virtually disappeared from the planet.
See also: Mountain
jungle animals
The fauna of the jungle varies according to its geographical location and its evolutionary history, but it is usually varied, abundant and rich in exchanges between species. Broadly speaking, we could organize them into the following categories:
- Large predators. Like medium-sized and larger cats: jaguars, panthers, tigers, pumas, capable of chasing prey through the foliage. Also birds of prey such as the hawk, eagle or night owl or hunting and constrictor snakes (boa, anaconda, etc.).
- Medium and large-sized herbivores. Especially quadrupeds such as the tapir or tapir, or in the African jungles, elephants and hippos, large ruminants.
- Insects and arachnids. Thousands, perhaps millions of species of insects and arachnids make up an entire ecosystem in themselves, linking with the flora on which they feed (fruits, leaves, nectar, bark, etc.) and providing food for rodents, birds and other insects or arachnids. Spiders, scorpions and praying mantises are not in short supply either.
- Rodents. Abundant in the framework of trees or in the understory litter, they usually encompass a whole range of climbers, runners and egg raiders. Many are scavengers.
- Small and medium birds. Birds of various sizes, generally equipped with colorful plumage and beaks specialized in obtaining food within logs, water, land or for predation on smaller species.
- Primates. Chimpanzees, orangutans and other close cousins of man.
jungle vegetation
The jungle flora is particularly abundant, due to the high levels of humidity and precipitation, when not derived from rivers and lagoons or mangroves.
Usually all levels of vegetation are found in the jungle from the creeping and bush, to the large trees with leafy crowns, and the parasitic plants on them. In these cases there is a fierce fight for light, so many species resort to various strategies to survive.
Amazon rainforest
The Amazon is located in South America, in part of the territory of the nations of Brazil, Venezuela, Colombia, Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru, Guyana, French Guyana and Suriname. It is about one of the largest expanses of humid tropical rainforest in the world where millions of plant and animal species coexist, which has earned it the distinction of being one of the seven natural wonders of the planet.
The Amazon rainforest It develops in the vicinity of the Amazon River and its river basin where the warm and rainy climate predominates, taken advantage of by evergreen and abundant vegetation. As it approaches Peru and the Andean mountain range, the jungle also gains several stories in height and further increases its biodiversity.
Desert
The desert is often considered the opposite ecoregion to the jungles. It is an arid area, with little or no precipitation, and therefore infertile soils and scarce life, adapted to extreme temperature conditions (intense heat during the day, cold at night) and drought.
Nowadays the deserts They occupy around 50 million square kilometers of the Earth's surface that is, almost a third of the planet.
