Amazon's amazing wildlife - swimming with pink dolphins & catching piranhas

My friends were shocked when I told them I had swum In the Amazon as they thought piranhas were dangerous & endemic in its waters.  But seeing the photos of me swimming with pink dolphins, catching piranhas and having a giant rat snake as a garland:  take your pick, the Amazon rain forest Is an unforgettable experience. 

The  forest is one of the most bio diverse places on earth. It is home to a number of freshwater species including over 3,000 different fish species.  
The world’s largest variety of electric fish, the Amazonian manatee, the black caiman, and Amazonian river dolphins live here. The Amazon River is the largest in the world.... it contains 20% of the planet’s freshwater supply. With over 1,100 tributaries, the Amazon Is called The River Sea.

The rainforest is spread across approximately 5,000,000 sq. miles : 40% of the continent of South America; only 6% of our planet.  Renowned for Its dense forest cover, it has a very dark and swampy floor with less light (1%) penetrating through the broad-leafed canopy. The rain forest covers nine countries in the continent, of which the maximum is In Brazil (60%); other countries are Surinam, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Venezuela, Bolivia, French Guiana, and Guyana. 

Again, the Amazon basin has a larger fish fauna than any other river basin on Earth, and Amazonia Is the centre of diversity for geotropical fish. The remarkable species richness can partly be explained by the large differences between the various parts of the Amazon basin, resulting in many fish species that are endemic to small regions. For example, fauna In clear water rivers differs from fauna In white and backwater rivers, fauna In slow moving sections show distinct differences compared to that in rapids, fauna In small streams differ from that In major rivers, and fauna In shallow sections show distinct differences compared to that In deep parts. Wow, isn’t that something !  I am indebted to various sources for this fascinating data. 

The Amazon experience began with our trip to a Manatee Rescue Centre in Iquitos which is in my blog – “Playing with Manatees, the gentle mermaids of the Amazon”.

On the very first day, we saw a three toed sloth way up in the tree and moving really slowly. It actually looked like an extension of the tree itself but a close look, through Huber’s binos, revealed its shape spread out between two branches. We saw eight macaws – yellow and blue in colour, egrets, a turkey vulture, black eagles, terns, a horned screamer and a Taegu lizard which was very fast in the water.  

One morning, we were told we would see a parakeet swarm at sunrise so we got up early and by 5.30 am, we were up on deck.The boat was docked in thick reeds which came right up to the 2^nd level. So imagine their height! The reeds / jungle was dense in the front end of the boat. The rear faced the river and the horizon. As sunrise came, we expected to see many thousands of parakeets rise up in a swarm similar to when I saw the bats at sunset in Shwe Dagon Pagoda, Yangon; but here we were at a loss as we saw a few hundred birds milling around chattering about this group of strangers in their midst! However, the sky was phenomenal with the colours of a sun rising majestically – unforgettable. 

When you first enter the rain forest, one of the first things you notice is the humidity: the air is unusually warm and sticky. There are two reasons for this. First, the Amazon lies in the tropics, meaning there is plenty of year-around sunshine. Second, the humidity is partly the result of the abundance of trees, which release water through pores in their leaves as a by-product of photosynthesis. During our jungle walk, with Huber as our guide, we saw some amazing species of animals. In my blog “The Amazon river's environs - the Pacaya Samira national reserve jungle” i have written about the trees and the jungle. 

But here, we were in for an awesome experience in our jungle walk as we saw many insects and animals:

The isula or bullet ant which has a horrific bite nearly one inch long.These two pictures show some colourful insects.

 




A green anaconda about four feet long. Huber handled it as if it was just a normal snake – its efforts to wrap itself around Huber were nixed as he had strong arms and the snake was not a full adult.  

The anaconda   inhabits the shallow waters of the Amazon and the emerald tree boa and the boa constrictor live In the Amazonian tree tops. Also the basilisk lizard lives In the Amazon basin. Many species are illegally collected and exported for the International pet trade. Live animals are the fourth largest commodity in the smuggling Industry after drugs, diamonds, and weapons.

A yellow belly dead leaf frog - very small ½” size brown frog which resembles a dead leaf. Excellent camouflage. More than 1,000 species of amphibians swim and are found In the Amazon. Unlike temperate frogs which are mostly limited to habitats near water, tropical frogs are most abundant in the trees and relatively few are found near bodies of water on the forest floor. The reason for this occurrence is quite simple: frogs must always keep their skin moist since almost half of their respiration  in carried out through their skin. The high humidity of the rain forest and frequent rain storms gives tropical frogs infinitely more freedom to move into the trees and escape the many predators of rain forest waters. The differences between temperate and tropical frogs extend beyond their habitat. 

Poison dart frog – red colour.Only ¼” large. Has poison under its skin. Huber said it can kill up to ten people as it has bitutoxin poison. Huber claimed they make curare from it but checking on the internet, I found no explanation of that.

Giant Tiger Rat snake – main photo above - this was easily around 7ft long which I draped as a necklace round my neck. Most of the group were astounded at first (they did not know that my niece’s python Buffy in Havea (Spain) had also been around me) so then they also had snake around them. 

Bird eating spider –it looked more like a tarantula to me.On the last day, I found a pin toed tarantula creeping up in the bar area – I just happened to look down and there it was on a beam, quietly it went and hid in the dark recess of the ship’s beam! Scary.

Our night excursion began in the Nautya Cari River after sunset. Then it was in total darkness – the only light coming from the moon! Imagine, total darkness with the moon being hidden by cloud cover at times. Pitch black. Kilometre after kilometre, sometimes slow, sometimes at speed. When we stopped, tyhe jungle came alive with myriad sounds.

No noise as Huber wanted us to listen to the sounds of the jungle. We had no satellite phone, nothing except a hand held radio which the guides used to communicate.  It was at times scary, more so when the boatman went at speed to catch the other boat to hand over something....

Huber was standing at the tip of the skiff. He had told two ladies to keep an eye on him – hold his ankles if he bent over to grab a specimen. But, they were too busy gossiping : when suddenly he lay down on the skiff floor, bent right over and grabbed something out of the water - it took less than 30 seconds - we had a torch to see what he had picked up - lo behold, he held a cayman, easily 3 ft long.

Beautiful creature. It was as much in

shock as we were. He calmly held it, showed it to each of us, gave it to one of the party to hold and then off we went in darkness looking for the other boat so that he could give the specimen to them to see. What got me thinking was Huber’s incredible reflexes and how did he see the creature in total darkness – it was its red eyes he caught on to.

  

We stopped for a while to listen to the frogs – a cacophony of sound. We could not see them until the boatman picked up a polka dot tree frog which, unfortunately for it, jumped off his hands and was promptly stepped upon by somebody who reacted to its jumping! Full grown it was ½” long. A beautiful specimen.
We saw the Aguaje fruit tree- which is called the miracle fruit for women! Each tree has 20,000 seeds per annum. Its beta-carotene is said to be 20X higher than carrots hence the locals suffer no eye problems! It’s also used to make juice, jam, ice cream, and a fermented "wine". An oil high in vitamin A is extracted from the pulp and is frequently used to treat burns because of its soothing qualities. The inflorescence buds are eaten as a vegetable and the sap can be drunk fresh or fermented. Threads and cords are locally produced from the tree's fibres.
 
We saw a row of six long nosed bats – smallest bat going – size of an Rs 2 or 50c or 50p coin. They apparently eat 800 mosquitoes in one hour.  They were sitting in a straight line just above the water line but as I came closer to photograph them, they upped and left! 

Black and pink dolphins were near us – the pink were together whilst the grey are solitary mammals. Whilst I swam, they were about 250 metres away, swimming in a group. Our party on board had a clearer view of them than we did from the water. 

Saddleback tamarind monkeys were crossing from tree to tree, seen in a rainy haze, but we did not see the owl monkeys which were at a separate spot in small islets off the river.

As we returned to our boat, we suddenly saw on the river a beautiful black giant whip snake – about 2” above the water level. It must have been 3ft long.

See the kingfisher near the curve of the branch

About 1500 bird species inhabit the Amazon Basin. The biodiversity of the Amazon and the sheer number of diverse bird species is given by the number of different bird families that reside in these humid forests.


Birds such as toucans and hummingbirds in a large range  are also found here. Macaws are famous for gathering by the hundreds along the clay cliffs of the Amazon River. 

Toucan

 


In the western Amazon hundreds of macaws  and other parrots descend to exposed river banks to consume clay on an almost daily basis, the exception being rainy days. 

One of the most interesting facts I learnt was that many animals eat mud – yes, mud- to digest the poisons in their system from the various leaves / tree fruit which they eat. This makes sense as they need to survive and the mud cleans the poison out.           The chestnut eared Aracari is one of the many medium-sized toucans that, together with the saffron toucanet, make up the genus Pteroglossus. They are brightly plumaged and have enormous contrastingly patterned bills.

Chestnut eared Aracari with ref photo on right

White chinned jacamar

               

                                                                             

One bird which is rare but which we saw clearly was the hoatzin which has brown plumage, large black eyes and a helmet of 5 or 6 feather sticking straight up.

 An iguana hanging upside down – this was a quick excursion as the guides had learnt of a sloth and iguana nearby in Las Palmas. 



















  
Next to it, we found the brown sloth which had a baby and we stood there for nearly 15 minutes looking at it – initially it was difficult to identify it as it just moulded itself to the tree but then gradually we saw the baby too.

The Amazon basin is home to the red bellied piranha, an omnivorous forager that encompasses a larger geographic area than any other piranha species.                 


We went piranha fishing.  This was really some thing at Lake Shiriyacu. I was the second person to catch a piranha – I was taught that the chicken bait has to be twisted three times around the hook else the fish will eat and escape. Each time I did this, i caught a piranha – total 3 times. Other times, being lazy, I just hooked it once or twice and every time, the fish just ate and escaped. Looking at a piranha, it’s a beautiful fish until you open its jaws and see the fearsome array of small teeth ready to shred you. Next day, at breakfast, they served our catch – I don’t much like fish so I avoided but I was told that they tasted okay except they had many bones. The Amazon basin rain forest is one of the most bio diverse places on earth and is home to a number of freshwater species including over 3,000 different fish species. 

The river rises to about 30 feet during the monsoons; its rich alluvium settles in the surrounding floodplain soils, while the water fills up the lakes and lagoons through its course.  During the monsoons, the width of the Amazon River can reach over 30 miles (50 kilometres).  

The Amazon Rain forest Is home to many exciting mysteries and amazing life forms. It is home to more than half of the known floral and fauna species. I am sure many of which are still to be discovered and named. Its wildlife includes bizarre beings like the Glass Frog, Jesus Lizard, Toothpick Fish, and Peanut Head Bug. The world’s largest reptile, the Anaconda, Is one of the most dangerous creatures prowling the rain forest. In addition, there are more than 20 stingray species that are known to be usually found In the Pacific Ocean, seen In the Inland freshwater lakes In Amazon.

At the end of our trip, we were handed a 17 page detailed list of all the wildlife in the Amazon area -  we sat as a group (we had some serious bird / animal watchers with us who had made notes throughout of what we were seeing on our excursions) - we ticked off each species we had actually seen. It was mind boggling! As per my list, it is 120 varieties of wildlife. Just plain awesome!!  

So, go to the Amazon – but ensure you fix an itinerary which gives you enough time to enjoy the trip. Don’t go in and buzz out. Take it easy. Find out how many kms the ship will travel in the itinerary, how many stops and where, what all do you see. Ensure you are in the inner recess of the river, not near Manaus, so you actually see the real rain forest. Make sure it’s a minimum two excursions into the forest each day and one night boat excursion, one proper jungle walk, meet the villagers. Breathe in the local culture. Enjoy whilst you can.  Safe travels. Its a journey you will never forget and which you will always remember.

Here are ten Interesting facts about the Amazon (and rainforests in general) that you may not have heard before. This is from an internet source, not verified.

1. Around 80% of the food we eat originally came from rainforests. Some of the more popular examples Include coffee, chocolate, rice, tomatoes, potatoes, bananas, black pepper, pineapples and corn. At The Inside Track we basically live on coffee. That’s reason enough to save the rainforest!

2. Tropical rainforests only cover about 6% of the Earth’s surface, but they are home to more than half the world’s total plant and animal species.

3. The forest floor is almost completely dark – with less that 1% of the available sunlight making It through the tree canopy above.

4. There are around 3,000 fruits found in rainforests, and in the west we make use of around 200 of them. However, Indigenous tribes make use of over 2,000!

5. The rainforests have begun to be destroyed in the last 100 years to make way for farm land. Today, the rainforests are being destroyed by 1.5 acres every second. That’s not a typo.

6. With deforestation continuing at such a fast rate, we’ve created the most rapid extinction rate in the history of the world. 137 rainforest species are exterminated completely every single day. Over half the world’s plants and animals can be found in the rainforests.

7. Over a quarter of the medicines we use today have their origins in the rainforests – and that’s after only about 1% of rainforest plants have been examined for their medicinal properties. Imagine what else could be there? It’s not outlandish to think that our best chance of curing the diseases that plague our world could lie within the rainforest. But with so many species exterminated every day, we may never find out.

8. We often think that the soil in the rainforest is really fertile to support such a huge range of plant and animal life. But rainforest land is not really any good for farming. Once cleared, the soil is of such low quality that it can hardly be used to grow anything. After a year or two of farming, the land is totally bereft of nutrients – leaving a useless patch of land.

9. Some people call the rainforests ‘the world’s lungs’, but decomposition of plant matter absorbs as much oxygen as the trees produce. It’s probably more accurate to think of them as having a cooling effect on the global climate, as they absorb a huge amount of heat from the sun. About 30% of our carbon emissions come from one thing – burning the rainforests.

10. If deforestation continues, we’ll completely lose the rainforests within the next 40 years.

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