This is where the trips end, and luckily, I saved the best for last. Here it is people. This is it. The Big One. The most famous and bio-diverse land area in the world. This is, the one and only, Amazon rain forest.
Not only is this the best tropical rain forest, but this was obviously the best trip as well! Why? It is because I saw a thousands interesting plants, which are cool. But what I liked the most, was the ANIMALS!! Holy macaroni the animals are awesome! We have frogs, lizards, caimen, monkeys, big cats, snakes, and thousands more! My favorite part of the whole trip was watching an anaconda eat a caiman (a type of crocodile). It swallowed the dang thing whole! How? Anacondas have unhinged jaws, which means they can swallow animals that are bigger than them! How crazy/awesome/frightening is that?
We also came across a jaguar on the tour, though I barely saw it. It's yellow spotted fur caused it to blend in with the sunlight and the surrounding plants.
And then we came across a caiman (that was not being eaten). This time it was eating a large fish it caught. Their powerful jaws combined with their sharp teeth make it easy to crush and tear prey to pieces.
I saw thousands of plants as well. Though I love the animals, the plants are pretty cool too. There were flowers, pods, vines, trees, shrubs, and hundreds of more. One the tour, I noticed that most of the trees had broad leaves with point tips at the end. That is because the leaves hold the water when it rains and the leaves drip the water onto the trees roots so it can grow.
Then I saw bamboo plants in a nearby pond. They were probably 90 ft tall, but that is just a guess. I thought they only grew in Asia, but it looks like I was wrong. The reason the bamboo gets so tall is to go above the canopy of trees and absorb as much sunlight as possible, for photosynthesis.
We also came across a few sugar cane plants. I already saw sugar cane in other places in the world, but now I wondered why. It turns out that sugar cane can change it's root system based on that environment it is in.
All animals and plants co-exist together. In the food chain/ food web, plants are always at the bottom because they are the founders of the food cycle.
Why are there more plants than animals? It is because plants have much more energy than plants do. When organisms are eaten, only 10% of the energy if passed on. Animals that are on the top of the food chain, for example, have to eat a lot to survive because they don't get enough energy,
So all together, I had an amazing time. These 3 trips were outstanding and I had a lot of fun and learned a lot. Thanks for following me on my journey. See you all later!
