Animal Life On The Rainforest Floor
A rainforest is typically made up of four key layers.
Animal life on the rainforest floor. Floor layer animal facts. A wide variety of life including insects and larger animals inhabits the rainforest floor. Animals that live on the floor layer are some of the largest in the rainforest and are a mix of both carnivores and herbivores. A 10 square kilometer 4 square mile patch can.
These include the colourful poison arrow frogs the yellow gold phyllobates terribilis or golden poison frog the horned toad the amazonian leaf toad the mottled forest frog and the tree frog. They are incredibly diverse and complex home to more than half of the world s plant and animal species even though they cover just 6 of earth s surface this makes rainforests astoundingly dense with flora and fauna. The tapir tapirus sp is a pig like herbivorous mammal with a short prehensile snout. Micro organisms like saprophytes recycle and feed on the decaying matter.
Only two percent of sunlight gets through the thick canopy trees and understory plants to reach the forest floor. Some of the larger animals that live in this layer. The forest floor is teeming with animal life particularly insects and arachnids also larger animals such as jaguars pumas gorillas anteaters and large snakes like the anaconda and the boa constrictor. These tropical rainforest animals feed on tree leaves and buds fruits ferns and fungi.
The fruit is eaten by hungry animals who poop out the seeds on the forest floor below allowing the plant to reproduce. The rainforest floor is very humid due to the evaporation of water from the leaves and shrubs that are found in this layer. The forest floor is the lowest layer where it is dark hot and damp. Emergent upper canopy understory and forest floor.
Large leafed shrubs and saplings new trees grow in the patches of sunlight. There is no grass here. About 50 90 of the life in a rainforest lives in this section. Rainforests are earth s oldest living ecosystems with some surviving in their present form for at least 70 million years.
A rainforest is a magical place thriving with all manner of plants and animals. The rainforest canopy is also home to the greatest amount of animals compared with other layers of this forest. In the top emergent layer trees as tall as 200 feet 60 meters grow far apart and tall. Okapis are diurnal and solitary in nature.
Many times we only see the ones flying through the air or that are big enough to catch our attention but there is a whole group of animals that live in the rainforest floor. Amphibians are another common animal on the forest floor. The most diverse and abundant animals on the rainforest floor are invertebrates. It is also the most humid part of the rainforest.