moss Then the branch started to move It turned out to be a sloth This type of animal sometimes moves so slowly that moss grows on it By the time the spider monkey reached the water a huge spider had already found it A goliath tarantula was quenching its own thirst The monkey backed away from the hairy creature It would wait until the tarantula was finished Life in the rain forest was never boring A Damp Ecosystem Rain forests are dense jungles filled with tall trees They receive much more rainfall than other forests Tropical rain forests can get up to 400 inches 1,000 cm of rain each year These wet environments are ideal for certain types of wildlife Many of these species are only found in rain forests Rain forests cover only about 6 percent of Earth’s surface But they are home to more than half of the world’s plant and animal species 6
Frequent heavy rains make rain forests very damp places 7
Ecosystems Large and Small A rain forest is a large ecosystem made up of many smaller ones In the Amazon Rain Forest the lowest areas make up the floodplain The land closest to the rivers is known as the váreza The terra firma ecosystem lies away from the rivers And the igapó is the forest that lines the blackwater rivers of the region Each of these areas is its own unique ecosystem Each plays a part in the larger ecosystem of the Amazon 8 These organisms and their environment make up the rain forest’s ecosystems Everything in an ecosystem even the soil and water affects everything else Animals eat plants or each other Plants and animals both need soil and water Rain Forests at Risk If just one plant or animal disappears it can have a wide impact on other organisms A complex web of predators prey and plants connects the rain forest ecosystems These ecosystems face many threats Logging farming and mining chip away at them At one time rain forests were twice as
Rain forests around the world are being cleared to make way for farms 9
