Brazilian Wildlife
Brazil spans an extremely vast amount of land, and so also encompasses many different ecoregions and several different kinds of biomes. This wide variety of habitats in Brazil, including the jungles of the Amazon Rainforest and the Atlantic Forest, the tropical savanna of the Cerrado, the xeric shrub land of the Caatinga, and the wetland area of the Pantanal, has allowed a great number of diverse flora and fauna to flourish.
There are many wild canids found in Brazil, including the maned wolf, hoary fox, short-eared dog, bush dog, crab-eating fox and pampas fox. The wild felines found in Brazil include the jaguar, puma, margay, oncilla, and jaguarondi. Brazil is also home to a slew of other notable animals, including sloths, armadillos, giant river otters, and capybaras. About seventy-five primate species can be found in Brazil, like the howler monkey, squirrel monkey, marmoset, capuchin monkey, and tamarin. The water boa frequently, though controversially, referred to as the world’s largest snake, the anaconda, can also be found in Brazil. Specimens have been measured to be up to thirty feet long, though historical reports claim to have found anaconda’s from fifty to one hundred feet long.
Brazil is also home to the Goliath Bird Eating Spider, a species of tarantula that is the largest spider in the world. Brazil is also calculated to have more insects than any other country in the world with more than seventy thousand species of insects, though some estimates claim there to be closer to fifteen million species, with new species being discovered almost daily. It also has the third largest number of distinct bird species, ranking only behind Colombia and Peru. There are over sixteen hundred indentifies species, including seventy species of parrot alone.
There are over three thousand identifies species of freshwater fish and over five hundred species of amphibians in Brazil. The most well known fish is Brazil, though other aquatic and amphibian Brazilian animals include the pink dolphin, which is the world’s largest river dolphin, alligators like the Black Caiman, and the pirarucu which is the world’s largest river fish. Brazil is also widely known for the brightly colored poison dart frogs that can be found throughout the Amazon Rainforest.
Most of the world’s fifty-five thousand plant species can be found in Brazil. In fact, about thirty percent of species of plants are endemic to Brazil. The Atlantic Forest region alone is home to tropical and subtropical moist forests, tropical savannas, mangrove forests, and tropical dry forests. Another three and a half thousand plant species can be found in the wetland known as the Pantanal region. The Cerrado savanna is the most diverse savanna in the whole world. The Pau-Brasil tree or Brazilwood tree that gave Brazil its name was once one of the most common plants in Brazil; however, excessive logging of the tree pushed the species towards extinction. However, since the creation of synthetic dies, the tree has been harvested far less. Conservation of natural species is an issue of great concern, especially in the Amazon.