Rainforests

Rainforests are the oldest living ecosystem on our planet and are incredible as well as beautiful. They only cover around 6 percent of the Earth's surface, but include more than fifty percent of plant and animal species in the world. You can picture a rainforest as a tall, dense jungle with plenty of rain all through the year. Rainforest climates are typically very hot and humid, but the rainforest plants and animals living there have learned to adapt to these extremes.

When we talk about rainforest facts, some foods we eat like chocolate, pineapple, and medicines we use are derived from rainforest plants and animals, and there are some ingredients which are only found in the rainforest climate.

The Amazon Rainforest is the largest and covers more than a billion acres, and includes regions in Venezuela, Colombia, Brazil, as well as parts of Peru and Ecuador. Borneo rainforests at one time were very dense with swampy coastal mangrove forests and a mountainous interior. It was almost impossible to explore and pass through this rainforest and there were headhunters in the inaccessible parts of the island less than a century ago.

The second largest rainforest system of the world is the African rainforests. And some of the richest rainforests are in Madagascar, it is home to many unique plants and animals not found anywhere else. The Congo rainforest is renowned for its chimpanzees, gorillas and elephants, as well as that well-known forest tribe, the pygmies.

Rainforest ecotourism has caught the attention of numerous tourists and environmentalists, and instead of making your next trip to a hotel or a resort where you sit around most of the day or go shopping, you can experience your vacation in some of the most spectacular rainforests in the world and experience exotic, abundant wildlife and very unusual people.