Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Many varieties of poison dart frogs such as this yellow-banded poison dart frog can be found in the
jungles of Brazil.
considered to have the greatest biodiversity of any country on the planet. It has the
most known species of plants (55,000), freshwater fish (3,000),
and mammals (over 689). It also ranks third on the list of countries with the
countries such as Brazil. Brazil is second only to Indonesia as the country with the
most endemic species.
Biodiversity
In the animal kingdom, there is general consensus that Brazil has the highest
This high diversity of fauna can be explained in part by the sheer size of Brazil and
species continue to be discovered and some species go extinct in the wild. Brazil
has the highest diversity of primates (131 species) and freshwater fish (over 3000
species) of any country in the world. It also claims the highest number
of mammals with 775 species, the second highest number of amphibians with 517
Brazil is home to around 9.5% of all the species and 13.1% of biota found in the
Enough is known about Brazilian fungi to say with confidence that the number of
native species must be very high and very diverse: in work almost entirely limited
to the state of Pernambuco, during the 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s, more than
best estimates suggest only about 7% of the world's true diversity of fungal species
has so far been discovered, with most of the known species having been described
from temperate regions, the number of fungal species occurring in Brazil is likely to
be far higher.
Because it encompasses many species-rich ecosystems for animals, fungi and
plants, Brazil houses many thousands of species, with many (if not most) of them
still undiscovered. Due to the relatively explosive economic and demographic rise
forests, particularly the Amazon, both official and unofficial, destroys areas the size
of a small country each year, and potentially a diverse variety of plants and
in an interesting way, some of their capabilities are being copied for use in
deforestation.
Ecoregions
of biomes. Because of the wide variety of habitats in Brazil, from the jungles of
A jaguar
The wild canids found in Brazil are the maned wolf, bush dog, hoary fox, short-
around 131 (in 2022) primate species, including the howler monkey, the capuchin
snake on the planet. This water boa has been measured up to 30 feet (9.1 m) long,
but historical reports note that native peoples and early European explorers claim
Invertebrates
Insects
Birds
Brazil ranks third on the list of countries, behind Colombia and Peru, with the most
and trogons to flamingos, ducks, vultures, hawks, eagles, owls, swans,
Brazil.
the emu.
Brazil has over 3,000 identified species of freshwater fish and over 500 species
While the majority of Brazil's fish species are native to the Amazon, the Paraná–
high number of troglobitic fish, with 25 species (15% of the total in the world)
Other aquatic and amphibian animals found in Brazil include the pink dolphin (the
the pirarucu (one of the world's largest river fish). Also familiar are the brightly
Fungi
The diversity of Brazil's fungi - even the small amount known so far to scientists - is
collected from various plants, the mycologist Batista and his colleagues, working in
Pernambuco in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, regularly recorded more than one
about fungi worldwide remains very fragmented, a preliminary estimate, based only
on the work of Batista, shows that the number of potentially endemic fungal
species in Brazil already exceeds 2000. Also, fungi is very often spotted in Brazil.
Plants
Princess flower
Brazil has 55,000 recorded plant species, the highest number of any
name) was a common plant found along the Atlantic coast of Brazil. But excessive
logging of the prized timber and red dye from the bark pushed the pau-brasil
towards extinction. However, since the inception of synthetic dyes, the pau-brasil
All over Brazil, in all biomes, are hundreds of species of orchids, including those in
Threats to wildlife
"At bottom right and bottom center, deforestation and cultivation are evident by the regular, rectangular
More than one-fifth of the Amazon Rainforest in Brazil has been completely
even more problematic in the Atlantic Forest, where nearly 93% of the forest has
been cleared. Of the 202 endangered animals in Brazil, 171 are in the Atlantic
petroleum-based fuels. Only about 15-20% comes from imported petroleum. This
massive national biofuel program has been devastating to tropical wildlife diversity,
program.