![]() If you catch a glimpse of a Hoatzin perched near an oxbow lake in the Amazon, you might wonder what you just saw. Learn more about the Tarantula on our animal page here! 4. As soon as he’s done, the Tarantula flees so that the aggressive female doesn’t attack or try to eat him! Quite a spider romance. Later, he finds a r eceptive female and inserts it into an opening into her abdomen. Then, he absorbs the liquid into his pedipalps, short leg-like limbs, to store it. Male Tarantulas spin a flat silk web on the ground, then rub against it to release semen. Tarantulas have decidedly interesting habits, especially when it comes to mating. The Peruvian Chicken Spider, a type of Tarantula, is a common sighting in the Tambopata jungle. You knew this one was coming, didn’t you? But while Tarantulas look undoubtedly creepy due to their huge size and furry legs, their appearance isn’t the weirdest thing about them! In fact, I include the family of large spiders here for their odd behavior. Learn more about the potoo bird on our animal page! 3. This, along with their weird calls, makes the Potoo bird a truly otherworldly, strange bird. They have huge eyes - perfect for spotting flying bugs - and giant, gaping mouths to catch them. The birds are nocturnal, waking at dusk to hunt moths and other insects. If you go looking for one, however, they’re incredibly hard to find without an experienced guide - their feathers match tree bark almost perfectly! There are several species of Potoo birds in the Amazon Rainforest. These haunting sounds (listen to them here) come, of course, from the Potoo bird. On moonlight nights, you may hear the cry of “po-TOO, po-TOO” coming from deep in the jungle. Learn more about the Candiru Fish on our animal page here! 2. Scientists are still getting to the bottom of this strange jungle fish. So is there any truth to these wild stories? The Candiru isn’t actually drawn to urine, so Amazon, ahem, urinators don’t need to be worried. Then in the only documented modern case in 1997, a Brazilian man and a local doctor claimed that a Candiru fish had jumped out of the water and swum up his urethra! Later, researchers largely disproved these claims, noting that Candirus are unable to jump out of water or swim up to such a small opening, along with many other inconsistencies. Rumors had swirled around for years about the small Amazon fish attacking local people’s genitalia, drawn by the smell of urine. The frightening legend of the Candiru fish has traveled far and wide, appearing in tabloids and newspapers from time to time all over the world. Here, we’ll explore the five weirdest animals in the Amazon rainforest, and look at why their unique adaptions work perfectly for them! All five, of course, live in the rainforests around our Tambopata lodges in Peru. In order to live in such a place, animals have evolved in all kinds of strange ways. In a rainforest the canopy block sunlight reaching the forest floor, so restricts vegetation growing on the forest floor, and holds in the moisture and humidity.īecause jungles have a much sparser canopy they are drier and lighter than rainforests and have much more vegetation growing at ground level.A rainforest is a tough place for animals to survive - after all, it’s home to giant predators, venomous insects and frogs, dangerous waters, and poisonous plants. ![]() Jungles don’t have as much skyscraping vegetation, so unlike rainforests don’t have a thick canopy. Rainforests and jungles are similar in many ways – they are both warm, tropical forest habitats filled with thick vegetation – but there are also some key differences. Is there a difference between a jungle and a rainforest? Put simply, a jungle is a forested area that combines warm temperatures with dense, ground-level vegetation. Plants such as shrubs, grasses, vines, and moss thrive in jungles, which makes it very difficult for humans to penetrate on foot without cutting a path through. These days ‘jungle’ is used to describe the ground level of densely forested tropical areas where there is tangled vegetation and underbrush. Since then the terms ‘tropical forest’ and ‘rainforest’ have more or less completely replaced the term ‘jungle’ to describe humid tropical forests. Prior to the 1970s, all tropical forests were generically referred to as jungle, whether they were rainforests, cloud forests, or mangroves. Nearly everyone has an idea about how they’d define the biome, and usage of the term ‘jungle’ has evolved significantly over the past fifty or so years. Before we look at some iconic jungle species it’s worth taking a moment to understand exactly what we mean by the term ‘jungle’. Jungle animals are some of the most diverse and numerous of any habit on the planet.
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