Jinzo X's video: Amazon: The Largest Rainforest On Earth - Documentary

The Amazon is the earth’s largest, richest, and most bio-diverse natural reserve. It is a vast landmass populated by millions of species of animals, plants, and several yet-to-be-identified native tribes. About 80% of this landmass is forest; hence, people would often call it ‘The Amazon Rainforest’. For centuries, explorers, scientists, and adventurers have ventured into this expansive natural reservoir, some with the aim of understanding and appreciating the true beauty and some to convert the rich green splendor into another kind of spendable ‘green’. Having inspired several documentaries, there are still several facts shrouded and protected by its thick jungle. Home to the second-longest river in the world, its rainforest is also the largest. It’s so vast it occupies a large chunk of South America, spanning nine countries. Asides from its size, it is popular also because it contains several mysteries, previously unknown civilizations, incredibly large and rare animals such as the Anaconda, exotic plant species, and many undiscovered life forms. However, deforestation through fire is an increasing threat, because the Amazon determines the earth’s climate by a great deal. We’ll get to that later. How and why exactly was this place named ‘The Amazon’? If you’ve seen the movie Wonder Woman, then you must already have heard about The Amazons, a tribe of fierce women warriors in Greek mythology. It is after this Greek mythical tribe of women warriors that the Amazon was named – because it was thought that the Amazons did live in this vast jungle. This assumption was because, on the 24th of June 1542, a group of brave riverside women warriors fought off Francisco de Orellana who was sent by Gonzalo Pizarro to find out the exact location of ‘El Dorado’, a city believed to be filled with gold. While they found neither the gold nor Amazons, the name the Europeans gave to this area continued to be “The Amazon” till this day. So, just how large is the Amazon? The Amazon basin is so large it is the same in size as 48 of the U.S. states if combined or almost twice the size of India in comparison. According to NASA, it covers a land area of 2.7 million square miles or 7 million square kilometers! This is over 35% of the total land area of South America. It is located within the territory of nine South American countries including Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Bolivia, Guyana, Venezuela, the French territory of Guiana, and Suriname. Of all of these countries, Brazil holds the largest portion of the Amazon, having almost two-thirds of the entire Amazon within its borders. As a result, the Amazon accounts for about half of the total landmass of Brazil. Only about 80% of the Amazon is covered by forest. Also within this huge expanse of land is the second-longest river in the world – the Amazon River! The Amazon is also home to about 30 million people, the majority of who are natives and many of these haven’t had any contact with the outside world. This is because a good deal of forested areas of the Amazon is dense and almost impenetrable. This makes mapping and studying this area extremely difficult. There is the possibility that there are more natives than previously thought. The Amazon remains the richest and most bio-diverse area in the world! Since its forest constitutes a significant portion of earth’s total rainforests, it is no surprise then that it houses 10% of all known species in the world. Some of these life forms are found nowhere else except in the Amazon. Essentially, this area boasts of about 2.5 million insect species, 40,000 species of plants, 16,000 species of trees, 3,000 species of fish, 1,300 bird species, over 430 mammal species, over 1,000 species of amphibians, and over 400 reptile species; including the iconic anaconda snake. By the way, did you know that the largest snake that ever existed, namely the Titanoboa lived in this very ecosystem some 60 million years ago? This gigantic snake could reach a length of up to 45 feet (that’s about 14 meters) and weight a ton. The Amazon is certainly a very interesting place. Given the rich biodiversity of the Amazon, are there any things currently posing a threat to this place? Well, the answer is yes. Deforestation is perhaps the greatest threat that the Amazon is currently facing. And the most devastating deforestation method is the numerous fires that burn this natural reservoir yearly. According to Britannica, between January and June 2019, about 75,000 fires occurred in Brazil’s Amazon. Notably, ranching takes up over 70% of deforested areas in the Amazon and this causes climatic changes worldwide as about 340 million tons of carbon are released into the atmosphere yearly. Narrator: Larry G. Jones