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Largest river on Earth, the mighty Amazon carves its way through a jungle of staggering
beauty.
These primal forests team with life in greater diversity than our planet has ever known.
Much of the forest is dry for about half the year and is home to a fascinating array of
creatures.
Then, in one of nature's most remarkable designs, the forest becomes truly transformed.
Every year, flood waters overflow the riverbanks and invade the land, creating a wondrous world
where the life of forest and river is joined.
Where fish hunt among the treetops and unlikely creatures swim through the branches.
Some descend to the water from the trees.
Others have relatives that live only in the ocean.
Here fish eat fruit and help the very forest to grow.
It is home to the largest rodent in the world, the smallest monkey.
And a rare monkey that lives nowhere else on Earth, whose fiery face may be a barometer
of its health.
For the local people, the Amazon is provider and sustainer, the lifeblood of their existence.
On intimate terms with its ever-changing moods, they rarely take more from the river than
they need to survive.
Others come to assault the Amazon, to bend nature's ways to suit the needs of man.
And yet, the loss of even a single species, plant or animal, injures the entire fragile
ecosystem.
Through the ages, time and change have been on the side of the Amazon, diversity perpetuating
itself.
See now through the Amazon's splendid and little-known land of the flooded forest.
The
Amazon River is born high in the Andes Mountains of Peru, but this was not always so.
Millions of years ago, the Andes did not exist, and the face of South America was quite unlike
it is today.
160 million years ago, Earth's land masses formed a single continent.
Then, the surface pulled apart and broke into huge plates that carried off the continents.
The South American plate moved westward.
Eventually, it collided with another plate, which gave way and slid under the South American
plate, and this forced up the Andes.
The Amazon, which had emptied into the Pacific, was now blocked by the Andes on the west and
highlands to the east and became a gigantic lake.
Much later, the lake waters forced their way through to the Atlantic.
Now a river, the Amazon, which had once flowed east to west, entirely reversed direction.
Today, the Amazon and its tributaries cross the borders of six countries.
The immense drainage basin is nearly as large as the contiguous United States.
Every year, rains cause the river to overflow, turning thousands of miles into flooded forests.
Depending on the amount of rainfall, flooded forests may stretch as much as 30 miles inland
on either side of the river.
One of the Amazon's foremost naturalists, Michael Goulding, was lured here while still
in college.
Sixteen years later, he has logged thousands of hours and miles to unravel many of the
ecological mysteries of the flooded forest.
Goulding knows that for the people here, the river's annual rise and fall dictates every
aspect of life.
Although houses are typically built on stilts on higher ground, many become inundated, often
families are forced to move.
The Santos family was spared this year.
Few Indian tribes are left, but thousands of people known as Caboclos live in scattered
isolation.
The term refers to peasants of mixed Indian and European blood who are uniquely adapted
to the harsh life of the Amazon.
It is a day-to-day existence, farming, hunting and gathering in the dry season, and fishing
year round.
They are, as one writer has put it, brothers of water, wind, and hope.
Often in these steamy jungles, hope is all they have.
Family and formal schooling are uncommon, malaria and infant mortality are all too well
known.
To help with his wildlife studies, Michael Goulding has always relied strongly on the
wisdom of the Caboclos.
The language is Portuguese.
Over the years, Caboclos have brought Goulding many kinds of unidentified fish or steered
him to the best places to study some intriguing insect, frog, or bird.
Without them, he says, I often couldn't do my research.
One thing that strikes me about the Indian and the peasant cultures along the river is
the incredible hospitality of these people and the way they will spend days and days
helping you to discover this incredibly complex world of a flooded forest.
The Caboclos may never have heard the word ecology, but its meaning is etched into their
very existence.
I see the Indians and the peasants that live along the rivers as scientists.
They must understand the life history, the ecology of the plants and animals that they
exploit in order to be successful.
This is an oral natural history and it is an incredible mine of information to be tapped.
During the wet season, there is no forest floor to walk on.
It is anywhere from five to fifty feet down.
Now the waterways become natural highways.
How the trees survive waterlogged for such long periods remains a mystery.
For Goulding, the floods are a far-reaching platform to get close to both the fish and
canopy animals whose interrelationships he studies.
Each time he enters the flooded forest, paddling literally through the treetops, Goulding experiences
a world that he describes as at once eerie and magical.
A timeless realm unlike any place else on earth.
To me, the flooded forest is really the most beautiful place on earth because it is where
I feel most tranquil.
And as a naturalist, I have this incredible diversity of our planet all in one place.
Not only do I have a rainforest, but also the river in the rainforest.
The Amazon has a greater diversity of fish than any other river in the world.
At least 2,000 species with perhaps as many yet undiscovered.
Goulding himself has collected nearly 400 species previously unknown.
During the floods, fish by the millions spread out from the main channel into the flooded
forest.
Proficient hunter, the electric eel emits 500 volts of electricity or more to stun and
capture its prey.
Many sought after aquarium fish thrive here, the beautiful discus, the iridescent neon.
For six months of the year where birds usually fly, a dazzling array of water creatures swims
between tree trunks, lives among the leaves.
The notorious Amazon piranha.
Early naturalists called the piranha the scourge of the Amazon.
Today we know that accounts of attacks on humans are highly exaggerated, but the piranhas
razor sharp teeth do make them feared and formidable hunters.
Feeding behavior varies widely among the 20 Amazon species of piranha.
This kind seldom kills.
It feeds mostly on scales and fins.
It is thought that fin nipping may have begun long ago as juvenile behavior and today carries
over in the adults.
The bites are rarely fatal and the fins will grow back within a few weeks.
An unlikely sight in any river, a stingray whose marine ancestors lived in the Pacific.
Millions of years ago as the Andes rose, ocean creatures like the ray became trapped here.
Over time they adapted to fresh water.
River dolphins also have saltwater ancestors.
A mother and her young search for fish among the tree tops.
These dolphins have poor eyesight, but with the uniquely flexible neck and a type of sonar
they can sail through the branches with ease and grace.
The ancestors of these dolphins like the stingrays underwent physiological changes that brought
into balance the salt content in their body fluids.
Today these freshwater dolphins are a common sight.
Animals believe that to harm or kill one brings bad luck or ill health.
One of the forest's most unusual fish is nicknamed the water monkey.
It feeds primarily on insects, easy prey when they fall into the water.
The arowana, as the water monkey is more correctly called, hunts by skimming the surface.
Its special eye structure enables it to see above and below water at the same time.
If the beetle doesn't cooperate and fall into the water, the water monkey simply goes in
pursuit.
80 feet above flood level lives a real monkey that is one of the great
leapers of the canopy.
The white-balled wakari exists nowhere else but in a few small patches of flooded forest.
It is so rare many river people have neither heard of nor seen one.
The red face may have evolved as a health indicator, especially for the presence of
malaria.
Surprisingly, the brighter the red, the healthier the animal.
The wakari lacks the long tail common to all other New World monkeys, but is no less agile
without it.
Until recently, everything about these wakaris was a mystery, but now it is known they feed
in groups of four to five individuals, travel more than most monkeys in search of food,
and more than 85% of their diet is fruit.
Mostly fur, wakaris actually weigh less than 10 pounds.
The face is not fully red until adulthood, but even babies bear the distinctive coloration.
Howler monkeys have the loudest voices in the forest.
Used to keep other groups at a distance, the roars carry for up to two miles.
Unlike the acrobatic wakari, the howler moves slowly and deliberately.
Roars often take several days to cover their small home range in search of fruit and leaves.
Perhaps the most bizarre canopy dweller of the Amazon is the sloth, which inches through
life in slow motion.
Awake about 12 hours a day, the sloth alternately feeds and rests, usually in the same tree.
It eats only leaves.
Low metabolism keeps body temperature low, therefore the sloth actually needs its shaggy
coat to retain body heat.
The mossy green look of its coat keeps the sloth well camouflaged.
This mantis, too, relies on disguise.
But a slight movement betrays its true identity to the emperor tamarin.
The Amazon basin is the richest bird region in the world, with over 900 species.
Almost half of these are found nowhere else on earth.
But birds are especially difficult to see high in the canopy and fly away at the slightest
disturbance.
Deep inside the flooded forest, Michael Goulding and his assistants build a metal scaffolding
that will support a blind or hide.
Flood waters here are more than 10 feet deep, and the scaffolding must be anchored securely
into the river bottom.
From the platform, Goulding will have an eye-level view of all manner of birds, monkeys, and
other canopy dwellers.
The human intruder must endure heat, humidity, and stinging insects, and above all, hours
and days of patient waiting.
A bird called the watson is perhaps the most unusual in the flooded forest.
Ungainly in the air, it never covers more than about 100 yards.
Watsons are found only in flooded forests and mangrove swamps.
Their relationship to all other bird families is a complete mystery.
Watsons are primarily leaf eaters, and one of their favorite foods is the giant arum
plant.
Chicks are born at the onset of the flood.
They feed on the partially digested leaves regurgitated by the parent.
When the chicks are about two weeks old, they begin to wander from the nest to explore,
but always under the attentive eye of two or three adults.
Watsons abound both in the trees and water.
The chicks have a unique wing structure.
On each are two claws that can be used in emergencies to grasp branches for better balance.
Another safety device is their ability to dive into the water and swim out of harm's
way.
In fact, the nest is built over water for exactly this reason.
But for this youngster, it becomes unnecessary.
The larger, more imposing parent shields it, and the chick is safe.
In high water, the arowana or water monkey spawns.
The male broods the fertilized eggs in his huge mouth, and here the young are born.
Now, when they are somewhat developed, he lets them out to feed on microorganisms such
as algae and the larvae of crustaceans and insects.
The yolk sac from which they develop is also a source of energy.
The father himself will not feed for three to four weeks until the young are grown and
on their own.
He lives off the fat reserves of his own body.
When the young sense danger, they flee back into the father's mouth.
If the young do not return on their own, the father goes after them and scoops them up,
watching every last one.
From December to May, it may rain in the Amazon every day.
Raging storms can be spent in only a few minutes.
Other times, sheets of water will pelt down nonstop for hours.
Over the course of a single wet season, up to a hundred inches may soak the basin.
Half of all the rain in the Amazon eventually will fall here again.
The river and the trees act as collecting vessels that hold the water until the heat
of another day causes it to evaporate upward and form new rain clouds.
Even during the dry season, trees supply much of the forest's humidity.
During the dry season, sloths remain in the canopy and infrequently come down to the ground.
A reduced number of mussels makes it almost impossible for them to walk.
But in this season, they can move comfortably from place to place by water.
In search of new food sources, they are able to cross entire river channels.
The fact that water is no barrier to them may well be the principal reason why sloths
are so widespread in the Amazon.
For the Santos family, the rains have submerged not only the yard, but some of the house itself.
The children find it anything but an inconvenience.
It will be at least two months before the waters recede below the level of the floor.
In addition to normal repairs for water damage, many Caboclo families must raise and lower
entire floors every year to accommodate the changing water level.
To survive in this wet wilderness, it is routine.
At the peak of high water, the flooded forest becomes a veritable orchard.
Most trees bear fruit at this time, probably because water helps disperse the seeds.
Thanks to years of painstaking study by Michael Goulding, scientists now understand the fascinating
interdependency among the forest, the floods, and the fish.
Good people have long known that fish feed beneath fruiting trees, and one scientist
commented on it a century ago.
But only now do we understand the full extent of this remarkable interaction.
Goulding confirmed that to crush the fruits and hard seeds that fall into the water, many
of the fish, such as the large Tambaqui, have evolved huge teeth and powerful jaws.
They feast at this time of year when fruits and seeds are plentiful, storing fat reserves
on which they'll survive for the rest of the year.
Tambaqui can locate fruit with their keen sense of smell.
The trees, in turn, are dependent on the fish to disperse some of the seeds when they spit
them out or defecate.
Literally dozens of fish and tree species are involved in this mutual dependency.
The message to those who would exploit the Amazon is clear.
Save the forests, for without them, there will be no fish.
Living in relative harmony with their environment, caboclos often use an ingenious technique
for fishing that mimics the behavior of the natural world.
One line is baited with fruit.
With a second, the fisherman whips the water to imitate the sound of falling fruit.
The noise lures the fish.
Caboclos use several fishing techniques, from bow and arrow or harpoon to a variety of nets,
depending on the season and type of fish.
With uncanny skill learned in childhood, they make their way easily through the labyrinth
of flooded forest.
Long gill nets are strung upright between two trees or vines.
They are set each afternoon, then checked the next morning.
These fishermen have been unsuccessful for several days, but today they have caught a
large tambaqui that weighs more than 30 pounds.
By midday, the men head home from the flooded forest with their catch.
One tambaqui will be the family's evening meal.
The other two will be sold tomorrow at market.
A tambaqui this size will easily make two meals for this family of six.
While many caboclos suffer from vitamin deficiencies, fresh fruits and vegetables are luxuries
few choose to buy, they rarely lack for protein, but without refrigeration, they must catch
it fresh every day.
In the gut of this tambaqui are more than a dozen palm seeds.
The fleshy fruit that surrounds the seeds has been digested.
With the fish lived, these remaining seeds would have been dispersed along the forest
floor, some to germinate later into new trees.
In the caboclo way of life, nothing is wasted.
The palm seeds feed the pigs, which in turn will become a source of meat and supplemental
income.
During the wet season, the pigs must be kept penned except when feeding to keep them from
falling into the river.
Floating grasses carried by the floodwaters also provide food for the pigs.
An over eager piglet is almost a casualty.
The tambaqui is washed, salted and sprinkled with lemon before it is roasted over the family's
charcoal fire.
A firm white meat fish, it has a mild flavor.
The caboclos consider the fatty portions along the rib bones a delicacy.
Caboclos earn less than the equivalent of a thousand U.S. dollars a year.
Many live almost entirely off the river and forest, able to buy little more than matches,
kerosene and coffee.
In the dry season, many supplement their fish diet by growing bananas, rice and manioc.
Caboclos rarely own the house in which they live.
More likely, they are tenants of an absentee landlord to whom they're almost always in
debt.
Many children hoping for a better life look to a future in the cities.
For now, their lives move to the rhythm of the river, the eternal cycles of the natural
world.
As a curtain of darkness falls, temperatures cool and the wind becomes still, a pageant
of life unseen by day begins to unfold.
Night monkeys are the only nocturnal monkeys in the world.
The night forest echoes with their mournful hoots.
They live in family groups in the hollows of trees, sleep by day and feed mostly on
fruit at night.
With all other monkeys asleep, they face little competition for food.
The toro rat, another nocturnal tree dweller, freezes at the sight of an enemy.
Were the toro rat in its tree hole, the boa constrictor would find it easy prey.
Instead, the boa finds a new home.
During the flood season, life in the canopy becomes more crowded and there's increased
competition for living space.
Many caboclos live long distances from towns or cities, but with a good breeze, Ramundo
Santos can reach one in about an hour.
The tambaqui is a much-priced fish that will bring good money, and so Ramundo makes the
trip whenever he has a surplus supply, usually about once a week.
Along the Amazon, sculpted from the jungle, are towns like Santorém that were founded
as forts by the Portuguese in the 17th century.
Today, river boats and ocean-going vessels crowd the docks.
Small-time fishermen must compete for space among the larger vessels.
Santos tambaqui brings the equivalent of ten U.S. dollars from a wholesaler, more than
a five-fold increase compared to a decade ago.
Ever since he arrived in the Amazon, Michael Goulding has combed its fish markets.
Over the years, with the help of local fishermen here and on the river, he has compiled enough
information for five books on the fish and other wildlife of the flooded forest.
And his discoveries about fruit-eating fish, such as the large-toothed tambaqui, made him
famous among his fellow biologists.
But Goulding sees a trend he finds alarming.
When I walk through an Amazon fish market today, the first thing that strikes me compared
to what I first saw in the early 1970s was that the fish now are much smaller.
I'm talking about the same species of fish.
And this indicates very clearly that the fishermen have over-exploited most of the main stocks
there, and consequently they begin to capture very young fish.
This shows very clearly that the fisheries are on their way down and probably won't last
for another four or five years.
It is commercial fishermen, not the average caboclo, who pose the threat.
For now, smaller and medium-sized fish still exist in profusion.
But the rains have come to an end.
As the level of the river drops, the waters drain from the flooded forest, and many fish
must leave.
They form schools, and hundreds of thousands migrate en masse.
Many fish head upstream, driven by a strong instinct to disperse.
At rapids, they fight relentlessly against the rushing waters, only to be caught.
During the flood season, these rocks would be completely submerged.
Even now, fishing is treacherous work, but the vast numbers bring the men back to this
spot year after year.
As drying continues, the water may drop slowly or as much as 20 inches a day.
The face of the land changes dramatically.
In some areas, underwater forests dry in the equatorial sun.
In other places along the river, stretches of sandy beach that have been submerged begin
to reappear.
The beaches have built up over the centuries from sands and silt washed down from the Andes.
Compelled by nature's most powerful instinct to reproduce one's own kind, thousands of
giant river turtles leave the flooded forest where they have been feeding and converge
on the beaches to nest.
It seems likely that some memorized navigational fix guides them here at the same time each
year.
The largest freshwater turtles in the world, they measure about three feet in length.
One female lays as many as a hundred eggs, all in the same nest.
Because so many turtles descend on the same beaches during the three-week nesting period,
new arrivals may accidentally dig up earlier nests.
Many of the eggs are thrown to the surface where they're grabbed up by waiting vultures.
The remaining eggs are carefully covered and left unattended to incubate in the warm sand.
The female will not see her eggs hatch.
In fact, she will not return for a full year until it is time to nest again.
By law, turtles cannot be hunted at any time, but for fishing, it is now during the dry
season that luck runs high.
Fish become concentrated in the shrinking bodies of water and are netted easily.
But a net is no match for one of the largest freshwater fish in the world.
The giant piraruku is the most prized food fish of the Amazon floodplain.
At the top of its underwater food chain, its only predator is man.
Traditionally, fishermen hunt this rare trophy with a harpoon.
In the shallow waters, the colossus is easily spotted when it comes to the surface to breathe.
Once harpooned, the large fish, which may weigh 200 pounds or more, can easily pull the weight
of men and canoe.
The struggle may go on for an hour.
Fishermen are willing to invest such time and energy because success enhances not only their
income but their status in the village.
When the fish is finally exhausted, the fisherman carefully maneuvers it aboard.
Locals consider the piraruku by far the most delicious of the Amazon fishes.
It has been severely hunted, and large ones like this are now rare.
In the past, piraruku measuring nine feet were not uncommon.
With the waters receding, front yards that had disappeared for months return.
Gardens must be both planted and harvested before the next flood wipes them out.
As it was for aboriginal people before them, the staple of the caboclo's diet is manioc.
No matter what else they grow, all families have a small garden for manioc.
A hearty plant well adapted to the tropics, it grows in a variety of soils.
Caboclos grate and roast the manioc root into a flour, which provides most of the starch
in their diet.
The only manioc product exported to North America is tapioca.
Where fish swam not long ago, chicks hunt for fallen crumbs.
Roasted manioc has the consistency and taste of gritty cornmeal.
It is eaten at every meal.
A trait common to peoples who live off the land is a reverence for it.
Caboclos are no exception, as they persevere in one of our planet's most inhospitable
worlds.
Once dry, the forests hold but few pools of water.
Where a fisherman paddled not long ago is once again dry forest floor.
The black fronted nunbird builds its nest in the leaf litter so recently underwater.
Birds that had fled into the canopy for safety during the flood now return to the forest
floor.
Clouds of butterflies search for exposed earth.
They congregate in huge numbers to take the mineral salts that leach out of the drained
river banks.
The swarms of butterflies attract birds known as sun bitterns.
During their elaborate courtship ritual, the male extends gifts of food to the female.
Sometimes the offering has to be presented more than once, but he doesn't give up.
Forty-five days have passed since the river turtles laid their eggs.
After hatching, the baby turtles struggle for two to three days to reach the surface.
The tiny reptiles, not much bigger than a silver dollar, instinctively head to the river.
Those that survive predators will return as adults in about six years to breed and nest.
One of the most common birds along the river's edge is the cassique.
Its nest is a woven basket suspended from a high branch.
The female does most of the painstaking work.
The male sings and displays.
The pygmy marmoset is the world's smallest monkey.
Monkeys are no more than six inches long and weigh only three to four ounces.
They catch and eat insects, but are also highly adapted for another kind of food gathering.
With chisel-like incisor teeth, they gouge holes in bark to make the sap begin to flow.
Unlike other monkeys that feed in hundreds or thousands of trees, pygmy marmosets live
cloistered in the same three or four trees throughout their lives.
Many monkeys must leave the flooded forest in the dry season because ripe fruits become
scarce, but wakaris can remain.
They merely change their diet and feed on green fruit and the nectar in the flowers
of trees that blossom now.
Of all the flooded forest monkeys, wakaris are able to tackle the greatest variety of
fruits and flowers.
The forest has passed through six months of dry season.
Now the coming of the rains signals change.
At the Amazon basin, the pulse of life will beat once again with the pulse of the flood.
The flooded forest is one of the world's last great wetland frontiers.
It is a key link in the entire Amazon system of rivers, lakes, and forests.
Michael Goulding has called the Amazon the greatest evolutionary theater in the world,
but he is gravely concerned for its future.
The accelerated development of the Amazon really began in the early 1970s when various
South American governments decided that it was time to develop this frontier.
But this process cannot continue forever and probably by the year 2000 there will be no
frontiers left in the Amazon, which is considered really the last frontier in and of itself
in the world.
For millions of impoverished people, the Amazon is not a wilderness to be kept pristine, but
is an invaluable resource to be used.
To feed growing populations, the land is cleared for crops and cattle pastures.
Hydroelectric dams change the ecology of the river and scar the land.
Gold mines too leave an indelible imprint on both forest and river.
The mercury used to process the gold is already appearing in fish at a frightening rate and
is spread silently into humans.
While governments wrestle with the complex issues, rainforest is disappearing at the
rate of 20 football fields a minute.
And with it, a fabric of life that took nature millions of years to design.
The forest's astonishing diversity is little understood and greatly under siege.
Scores of species are being wiped out before they've even been identified.
Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, beauty is its own excuse for being.
But it is clear that the fate of the Amazon is not simply a matter of aesthetics.
It is a matter of survival.
Not only for the splendid creatures that live here, but ultimately for ourselves.
In the words of one wise observer, let us permit nature to take her own way.
She better understands her own affairs than we.
And she will.
We hope you have enjoyed this presentation from the National Geographic Video Library.
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