WEBVTT - The Awe-Inspiring, Absolutely Crucial Amazon 0:00:01.440 --> 0:00:11.160 Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, 0:00:11.200 --> 0:00:13.880 and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's 0:00:14.000 --> 0:00:16.919 Charles W Chuck Bryant, and Jerry Jerome Roland. And you 0:00:17.040 --> 0:00:20.720 put the three of us together, put some super glue 0:00:20.760 --> 0:00:23.840 between us, hold us together for an hour and a half. 0:00:24.720 --> 0:00:29.319 You've got an episode of Stuff You Should Know. I 0:00:29.440 --> 0:00:31.520 love Olivia helped us with this. I love her title 0:00:31.520 --> 0:00:35.520 of this one. It was titled the awe Inspiring, absolutely 0:00:35.640 --> 0:00:40.200 Crucial Amazon. Yep. And that's what we're going to talk about. 0:00:40.240 --> 0:00:45.720 This amazing biome about the size of the continental United 0:00:45.760 --> 0:00:52.600 States that it's you want me to keep going? Yeah, 0:00:52.640 --> 0:00:57.480 that is so big that it has I mean, how 0:00:57.480 --> 0:00:59.640 big is it compared to the world, Like one percent 0:00:59.760 --> 0:01:03.080 of the world of the Earth's surface, Yes, but houses 0:01:03.200 --> 0:01:09.640 about thirty percent of the biodiversity. Yeah, the world's terrestrial species. 0:01:09.680 --> 0:01:14.720 I mean, like it's it's really difficult to overstate just 0:01:14.760 --> 0:01:18.640 how unique and important the Amazon rainforest is. It's want 0:01:18.640 --> 0:01:24.240 to go now, Yeah, I like looking at pictures of it. 0:01:24.240 --> 0:01:26.080 It would be cool. I'm sure it would be cool, 0:01:26.120 --> 0:01:27.320 but it'd be one of those things where I wish 0:01:27.319 --> 0:01:29.520 I could just teleport there and like hang out and 0:01:29.520 --> 0:01:31.800 then teleport home. Like that's probably a big trip to 0:01:31.840 --> 0:01:34.640 get into the Amazon these days, you know. Yeah, And 0:01:34.680 --> 0:01:38.040 I'm also curious about what kind of trips are good 0:01:38.120 --> 0:01:42.160 trips that don't disturb things in such a way, like 0:01:42.240 --> 0:01:45.600 where you're not just some like Credi American tourists doing 0:01:45.600 --> 0:01:48.600 the wrong thing. Right for sure, for sure. But one 0:01:48.600 --> 0:01:51.040 of the things about the Amazon is that a lot 0:01:51.120 --> 0:01:57.400 of people take it as this pristine, untouched natural wilderness 0:01:57.480 --> 0:02:00.440 that we're trying to protect. And for a very long time, 0:02:00.480 --> 0:02:02.920 that's what that was the consensus, not just among the 0:02:02.920 --> 0:02:07.680 general public, but among anthropologists, archaeologists, um, a bunch of 0:02:07.720 --> 0:02:11.640 different oologists, and that the people who had lived there 0:02:11.680 --> 0:02:15.359 lived so lightly upon the land that they were almost 0:02:16.560 --> 0:02:18.920 you know, they were they were almost having about the 0:02:19.000 --> 0:02:21.760 same impact as some of the other like some of 0:02:21.800 --> 0:02:25.120 the wildlife there, that it just wasn't they weren't impacting 0:02:25.120 --> 0:02:28.880 it enough to even consider it a significant amount, And 0:02:29.000 --> 0:02:33.280 that that Amazon was just this natural gift on Earth 0:02:34.040 --> 0:02:37.000 m that we we had, you know, as part of 0:02:37.040 --> 0:02:41.000 our cultural or global heritage, right, yeah, like a giant 0:02:41.480 --> 0:02:45.160 international park or something exactly. So what we've come to 0:02:45.200 --> 0:02:47.520 find is that that's absolutely not the case. That the 0:02:47.600 --> 0:02:52.359 Amazon was actually not entirely but significant chunks of it 0:02:52.480 --> 0:02:58.320 were engineered by humans, and that probably the best way 0:02:58.360 --> 0:03:01.120 to preserve it is to hand as much as we 0:03:01.200 --> 0:03:04.840 can of it over to the humans who have traditionally 0:03:04.880 --> 0:03:08.359 lived there, who are the descendants of the people who 0:03:08.520 --> 0:03:13.400 engineered it years back. Yeah, which, well, we got some 0:03:13.480 --> 0:03:15.839 stats on that later, but I thought that was pretty cool. Yeah, 0:03:15.919 --> 0:03:18.839 for sure, So I we should probably start further back 0:03:18.840 --> 0:03:22.160 than humans, even because the Amazon has been around for 0:03:22.360 --> 0:03:24.600 about the last fifteen million years, and it started out 0:03:24.600 --> 0:03:28.880 as a giant lake, yeah, a big freshwater lake. And 0:03:29.000 --> 0:03:31.840 over time, like to the tune of millions of years, 0:03:32.639 --> 0:03:35.480 sea levels fell and eventually, you know, things are going 0:03:35.560 --> 0:03:39.280 to change geologically speaking around it, and it became a 0:03:39.280 --> 0:03:44.400 wetlands and then about eleven millionish years ago it finally 0:03:44.400 --> 0:03:48.560 turned into a river system flowing east into the ocean. 0:03:49.680 --> 0:03:53.320 But that wasn't all right. Things continue to change from there. Yeah, 0:03:53.840 --> 0:03:58.000 So basically they carved the rivers flowing from the headwaters 0:03:58.000 --> 0:04:03.040 in the Andes eastward towards the Atlanta. They carved well, 0:04:03.080 --> 0:04:05.840 they made an impression on the continent and they also 0:04:05.960 --> 0:04:09.240 brought sediment to the river, so soils started to grow, 0:04:10.160 --> 0:04:15.480 which is really significant because tropical rainforest soil is typically 0:04:16.160 --> 0:04:20.400 rather infertile because it's so hot and so humid that 0:04:20.480 --> 0:04:25.800 stuff decomposes basically too quickly to create nutrients trapped in 0:04:25.839 --> 0:04:29.039 the soil. So the fact that that there were sediments, 0:04:29.040 --> 0:04:31.560 that there were nutrients being brought into it by the 0:04:31.680 --> 0:04:35.040 river is what allowed the i Amazon basin to become 0:04:35.080 --> 0:04:40.680 so lush, yeah, and diverse. So still, this is, you know, 0:04:40.720 --> 0:04:44.560 like eleven millions years ago, you had savannahs, you had 0:04:44.600 --> 0:04:48.120 big patches like Olivia called them islands of forests, and 0:04:48.160 --> 0:04:51.520 he had all sorts of sort of smaller biomes. And 0:04:51.600 --> 0:04:57.440 then through different ice ages ages, we'll just call them ages. Sure, 0:04:57.839 --> 0:05:01.760 things were changing, things were shifting. It became wetter than 0:05:01.839 --> 0:05:06.320 it became drier. The river system would change direction like 0:05:06.440 --> 0:05:10.679 in its flow. And basically if you go back about 0:05:10.800 --> 0:05:13.520 five million years is where you finally get to the 0:05:13.600 --> 0:05:16.760 point where the Amazon kind of as we know it 0:05:17.560 --> 0:05:22.320 speciologically speaking, I don't know that's a word, but that's 0:05:22.400 --> 0:05:24.800 kind of where things started as far as what we 0:05:24.880 --> 0:05:28.320 know lives there today. Yeah, you would if you went 0:05:28.360 --> 0:05:31.920 back five million years, four million years, you would probably 0:05:31.960 --> 0:05:35.040 recognize it more than you would have, you know, several 0:05:35.080 --> 0:05:39.080 million years before that. Yeah, So for the past thirteen 0:05:39.120 --> 0:05:44.120 thousand years at least, humans have been shaping the Amazon 0:05:44.200 --> 0:05:47.640 as well. We've talked a lot about some of the 0:05:47.760 --> 0:05:55.920 law civilizations of the Maya and other Mesoamerican groups, indigenous groups, well, 0:05:56.160 --> 0:05:59.760 they were no strangers to the Amazon basin, and so 0:06:00.160 --> 0:06:04.080 much the same way that we've discovered ancient Maya cities, 0:06:04.360 --> 0:06:09.080 we've also discovered other ancient cultures in the Amazon as well. 0:06:09.360 --> 0:06:11.159 We'll talk a little more about them in a second. 0:06:11.160 --> 0:06:14.160 But one of the big marks that humans left on 0:06:14.520 --> 0:06:18.200 the Amazon was something called terra pretta, which is black 0:06:18.240 --> 0:06:23.479 soil in Portuguese, and black soil refers to highly fertile, 0:06:23.920 --> 0:06:28.680 highly productive soil found in huge swaths of the Amazon 0:06:28.760 --> 0:06:35.359 basin that were basically created. These soils were created a 0:06:35.440 --> 0:06:40.120 couple of thousand years ago. They're still fertile today. They 0:06:40.520 --> 0:06:43.159 you can still put a plant in this soil and 0:06:43.279 --> 0:06:46.240 not fertilize it and it will grow very very well, 0:06:46.279 --> 0:06:49.920 which again is really uncharacteristic for an Amazon rainforest. So 0:06:49.960 --> 0:06:52.400 they started looking into it and they found that there 0:06:52.480 --> 0:06:56.680 was a technique that was either purposeful or accidental. Either way, 0:06:56.720 --> 0:06:59.720 it created this terra pretta where they would they would 0:06:59.720 --> 0:07:02.719 create landscapes of biochart. They would do these low intensity 0:07:02.720 --> 0:07:06.080 burns that didn't burn trees all the way down into ash, 0:07:06.160 --> 0:07:10.120 but left huge chunks of charcoal which got subsumed into 0:07:10.160 --> 0:07:13.120 the soil along with food waste and sometimes broken pottery, 0:07:13.480 --> 0:07:17.560 and that that would hold this organic available carbon in 0:07:17.600 --> 0:07:22.160 the soil again for thousands of years. And there I 0:07:22.160 --> 0:07:25.000 feel like the consensus is leaning more toward this was 0:07:25.040 --> 0:07:28.280 a purposeful thing that they did to create the soil, 0:07:28.320 --> 0:07:32.840 because we also know that they used it for agriculture too. Yeah, 0:07:32.880 --> 0:07:36.200 so the thought that it was just hunters and gatherers 0:07:36.800 --> 0:07:40.040 for many, many tens of thousands of years is looking 0:07:40.080 --> 0:07:43.200 like that's not true, and it was more hunters and farmers, right. 0:07:43.720 --> 0:07:45.920 They probably did some gathering as well. Should imagine if 0:07:45.920 --> 0:07:49.120 there was something to gather, they weren't like, I'm not 0:07:49.160 --> 0:07:52.440 gathering anything. It's not part of the job description. We 0:07:52.520 --> 0:07:54.200 know how to plant things, we know how to engineer 0:07:54.240 --> 0:07:57.720 this great soil. But there is evidence that they were, 0:07:58.120 --> 0:08:01.800 you know, domesticating plants back as far as like six 0:08:01.880 --> 0:08:05.680 thousand BC. And on the same note that there's just 0:08:05.720 --> 0:08:09.120 so much we thought we knew about the early indigenous 0:08:09.120 --> 0:08:12.240 peoples of the Amazon that was completely wrong, as it 0:08:12.240 --> 0:08:16.040 turns out, and one is like how many people were 0:08:16.040 --> 0:08:19.120 there and how they lived and what they basically kind 0:08:19.120 --> 0:08:21.960 of come to the conclusion now after you know, a 0:08:22.000 --> 0:08:26.760 couple of hundred years of thinking otherwise, is when Europeans 0:08:26.800 --> 0:08:32.800 would encounter like a sort of smallish tribe of disparate people. 0:08:33.480 --> 0:08:36.200 It wasn't just that they were roaming around the Amazon. 0:08:36.400 --> 0:08:40.800 It's that they were displaced by those very Europeans, and 0:08:41.000 --> 0:08:44.280 that at one time there were groups in the Amazon 0:08:44.360 --> 0:08:48.080 that numbered in the you know, two or three thousands, 0:08:48.120 --> 0:08:50.600 and that those groups live near enough to each other 0:08:50.880 --> 0:08:53.400 where they were larger groups of up to like a 0:08:53.480 --> 0:08:58.440 million people that were like building roads in using sort 0:08:58.480 --> 0:09:02.559 of rudimentary tools and lanting things and building six story 0:09:02.640 --> 0:09:08.079 high complex structures. Yeah, there's one particular complex called the Launostemojos. 0:09:08.800 --> 0:09:11.400 It's about the size of England and it housed about 0:09:11.440 --> 0:09:16.480 a million people um in I believe the beginning of 0:09:16.520 --> 0:09:21.080 the last millennium to about the fourteen hundreds, I think, 0:09:21.559 --> 0:09:25.640 and in particular, there was the Casarabe culture um and 0:09:25.679 --> 0:09:30.679 they did what was considered low density urbanism, cultivated a 0:09:31.440 --> 0:09:33.720 letter in there by the way I looked it up, 0:09:33.800 --> 0:09:37.920 that's correct though, Oh really huh, Solidia left it out. Yeah, 0:09:37.960 --> 0:09:41.520 I believe so, all right, look at you Casarabe. Finally, 0:09:41.720 --> 0:09:45.320 my addition of an extra vowe really comes in handy 0:09:45.720 --> 0:09:49.760 because whether it's correct or not, you know, right, So, 0:09:49.800 --> 0:09:51.560 but they did they did what you were talking about 0:09:51.600 --> 0:09:55.480 where they built these structures. They built raised terraces that 0:09:55.720 --> 0:09:58.840 so that their crop land wasn't affected by regional or 0:09:59.120 --> 0:10:04.480 seasonal flooding. They connected these villages by raised causeways. They 0:10:04.559 --> 0:10:08.800 did all this amazing stuff. And then because of probably 0:10:08.840 --> 0:10:11.040 climate change like we saw in the you know what 0:10:11.120 --> 0:10:14.840 happened to the Maya civilization episode, we did, they abandoned 0:10:14.880 --> 0:10:17.640 these structures. And then once the Europeans showed up and 0:10:17.679 --> 0:10:22.359 introduced smallpox, that was that was it. Like whatever civilizations 0:10:22.360 --> 0:10:25.040 were left were wiped out, to the tune of potentially 0:10:25.120 --> 0:10:28.800 ninety percent of the inhabitants of the Amazon were wiped 0:10:28.800 --> 0:10:33.080 out by smallpox starting in the sixteenth century onward. And 0:10:33.120 --> 0:10:36.440 then so yeah, when the Spaniards came across these you know, 0:10:36.520 --> 0:10:39.600 wandering bands of hunter gathers. They just assumed that's what 0:10:39.679 --> 0:10:41.760 it had always been there, who had always been there. 0:10:41.880 --> 0:10:44.600 And it turns out that these were essentially refugees from 0:10:44.960 --> 0:10:49.960 European conquests, smallpox and a climate change essentially, and that 0:10:50.240 --> 0:10:53.240 they didn't they didn't really resemble the cultures that they 0:10:53.240 --> 0:10:56.079 had come from at all. Yeah. And not only that, 0:10:56.160 --> 0:11:00.760 but the Spaniards were writing about these big, interconnected roadways 0:11:00.760 --> 0:11:07.439 that were maintained and wide and usable between these different villages, 0:11:07.640 --> 0:11:10.000 and they would write about those and for you know, 0:11:10.120 --> 0:11:12.600 a couple hundred years, people were just like scholars and 0:11:12.679 --> 0:11:16.680 researchers were just like, yeah, they clearly mistook it, or 0:11:16.720 --> 0:11:19.559 that just definitely wasn't going on, and now they're thinking like, oh, 0:11:19.600 --> 0:11:22.360 those probably were roads. Yeah. I mean, it's one of 0:11:22.360 --> 0:11:27.400 those amazing reversals of understanding that you rarely find in history, 0:11:27.480 --> 0:11:32.120 where these stories of legendary last cities actually were true 0:11:32.240 --> 0:11:35.520 and we're finding them now. It's pretty thrilling, actually, I 0:11:35.559 --> 0:11:39.680 mean from a historians point of view, not like I 0:11:39.720 --> 0:11:42.120 don't know, from a computer programmer's point of view. It's 0:11:42.120 --> 0:11:46.000 so so so that gets us kind of where we 0:11:46.040 --> 0:11:51.640 are today, which is the Amazon Rainforest is in nine 0:11:51.640 --> 0:11:55.640 countries in South America. Most of it, sixty percent of 0:11:55.640 --> 0:11:58.680 it is in Brazil, and then the rest is divided 0:11:58.720 --> 0:12:06.560 among Bolivia, Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, Guiana, Suriname, Ecuador, and French Guiana. 0:12:06.920 --> 0:12:10.160 Right is that right? Yeah? Yeah, I think they just 0:12:10.200 --> 0:12:13.600 spell it differently because they're lee francaie. Yeah. And that's 0:12:13.840 --> 0:12:18.600 two million square miles, not acres, my friends, square miles. 0:12:19.000 --> 0:12:23.480 It's so mind boggling that, like we said, has about 0:12:23.480 --> 0:12:27.600 ten percent of all known species on planet Earth reside 0:12:27.600 --> 0:12:31.840 there in thirty percent of terrestrial land walking species. There's 0:12:31.840 --> 0:12:35.120 a really great stat that seems to be accurate. I 0:12:35.160 --> 0:12:38.560 don't think it's just one of those copy paste stats. 0:12:38.880 --> 0:12:42.840 The ants one, Yeah, that on certain bushes in the Amazon, 0:12:43.040 --> 0:12:45.800 you may find more species of ants on that one 0:12:45.840 --> 0:12:49.280 bush than you'll find in the entire British Isles. That's 0:12:49.280 --> 0:12:53.960 how biodiverse this area is. Yeah, that's one of the reasons, 0:12:53.960 --> 0:12:56.959 like I do want to go visit because it sounds 0:12:57.000 --> 0:12:59.760 amazing and life changing. But then when I think of 0:13:00.120 --> 0:13:03.600 and I'm not necessarily afraid of insects or anything, but 0:13:03.640 --> 0:13:08.520 I think it's so buggy and insecty it's even someone 0:13:08.559 --> 0:13:10.880 who's not too bothered by it can kind of be 0:13:10.920 --> 0:13:15.800 pushed over the edge, my friend. The largest spiders in 0:13:15.840 --> 0:13:19.400 the world are found in the Amazon, in particular, tarantulas 0:13:19.960 --> 0:13:23.800 that are thirteen inches or about thirty three centimeters across. 0:13:23.960 --> 0:13:27.040 Can you imagine seeing a tarantula coming at you that's 0:13:27.120 --> 0:13:30.959 a foot across? I would just be like, just kill 0:13:31.000 --> 0:13:32.760 me now. I know you can't kill me, but please 0:13:32.760 --> 0:13:36.120 figure out a way to kill me. Tarantula. Oh, could 0:13:36.160 --> 0:13:40.080 you know? They're not actually deadly to humans? They're what 0:13:40.320 --> 0:13:43.960 they're not deadly to humans, they're just terrifying looking. No, 0:13:44.120 --> 0:13:46.680 they're deadly in that you you die of a cardiac 0:13:46.800 --> 0:13:49.320 arrest right when one of them sinks their fans into 0:13:49.360 --> 0:13:50.880 you with there and looks at you with their I 0:13:50.920 --> 0:13:54.600 don't know what they have, like two hundred eyes at least. Yeah. 0:13:54.960 --> 0:13:57.839 So um. The life in the Amazon rainforest and in 0:13:57.960 --> 0:14:03.679 all rainforests, really are divided up vertically, Like there's basically 0:14:03.800 --> 0:14:07.120 different ecosystems from the tops of the trees down to 0:14:07.200 --> 0:14:13.120 the forest floors. They're so radically different that just going 0:14:13.200 --> 0:14:15.080 up and down a single tree you find all this 0:14:15.200 --> 0:14:17.760 different kind of life, and not only different kinds of life, 0:14:18.000 --> 0:14:21.080 different climates depending on where you are. If you're at 0:14:21.080 --> 0:14:23.920 the top of the rainforest and the overstory or the canopy, 0:14:24.240 --> 0:14:26.680 that's a much different world than it is down at 0:14:26.720 --> 0:14:30.160 the shrub level. It's pretty interesting. Yeah, I guess we 0:14:30.200 --> 0:14:34.440 should start at what you said was the overstory or 0:14:34.480 --> 0:14:37.360 that's also known as the emergent layer, where did Lando 0:14:37.440 --> 0:14:44.200 Calariesian live sky City or something? Yeah, I can't remember, Okay, 0:14:44.280 --> 0:14:48.720 that's basically that. Yeah, boy, I'm sorry Star Wars people. 0:14:48.720 --> 0:14:50.160 I'm a Star Wars guy, but I don't remember all 0:14:50.160 --> 0:14:52.840 that stuff. I think it was sky City or Skyville, USA, 0:14:53.040 --> 0:14:59.240 something like that. Yeah, he's like, did you get your 0:14:59.240 --> 0:15:03.640 T shirt when you've flew in? Ya? Smirnov is playing tonight. 0:15:04.680 --> 0:15:07.840 So there are we're talking tall, tall trees, a couple 0:15:07.840 --> 0:15:11.640 of hundred feet tall, sometimes that limbs spreading out one 0:15:11.720 --> 0:15:15.400 hundred feet wide, blowing and dropping seeds all over the place. 0:15:16.240 --> 0:15:18.960 Then under that you're gonna have your canopy. Um that 0:15:19.080 --> 0:15:22.280 is where you have your overlapping tree branches. And this 0:15:22.440 --> 0:15:26.280 remarkably holds sixty to ninety percent of life in the 0:15:26.320 --> 0:15:30.480 Amazon nuts in the canopy is crazy. And also I 0:15:30.520 --> 0:15:34.120 saw that these these branches just appear to overlap, especially 0:15:34.160 --> 0:15:37.920 from an airplane overhead, But if you actually could walk 0:15:38.000 --> 0:15:40.600 from tree to tree, you would see that they're None 0:15:40.600 --> 0:15:43.320 of the trees touch. There's like a few feet different 0:15:43.520 --> 0:15:47.400 between the trees in the canopy. And it's a mystery. 0:15:47.600 --> 0:15:50.920 They have no idea exactly why the trees don't grow 0:15:51.240 --> 0:15:55.560 touching one another. Um. They think that's probably to keep 0:15:55.640 --> 0:15:59.360 from diseases from spreading or like you know, um, destructive 0:15:59.360 --> 0:16:02.560 beetles from being able to climb from one tree to another. 0:16:02.920 --> 0:16:05.480 But they actually don't touch, and they stay about a 0:16:05.480 --> 0:16:07.800 foot or so a couple feet away from one another 0:16:08.080 --> 0:16:12.320 on all sides. Isn't that fascinating? Oh? I figured they overlap, 0:16:12.360 --> 0:16:16.560 meaning they don't touch, but they overlapped vertically. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, 0:16:16.600 --> 0:16:20.080 they'll do that, but they don't actually touch. Oh oh yeah, Okay, 0:16:20.120 --> 0:16:23.200 they just go I'm not touching you to one another, right, Okay. 0:16:25.080 --> 0:16:28.360 The canopy, like you said, is a completely different environment. 0:16:28.400 --> 0:16:32.760 You're gonna have all kinds of fun birds and lizards 0:16:32.760 --> 0:16:35.880 and slous and monkeys and all kinds of creatures and 0:16:35.920 --> 0:16:40.360 plants up there. One hundred feet up. Sometimes it's much hotter. 0:16:40.440 --> 0:16:43.320 You talked about the different climates, much hotter and much 0:16:43.400 --> 0:16:47.080 dryer during the day, and it's there's a lot of 0:16:47.240 --> 0:16:50.680 canopy out there, so the visibility is very poor, so 0:16:50.760 --> 0:16:52.960 there's a lot of noise because they're all chirping at 0:16:53.000 --> 0:16:55.200 one another. Yeah, and one hundred feet up at the 0:16:55.240 --> 0:16:57.480 canopy and then you know another one hundred feet at 0:16:57.480 --> 0:16:59.920 the over story. There's a lot more wind. It's really 0:17:00.320 --> 0:17:04.480 being blasted by bright sunlight. And that's just again a 0:17:04.480 --> 0:17:07.680 different world from underneath the canopy, on the shrub layer, 0:17:07.760 --> 0:17:12.200 the forest floor. It's really humid, that the light is dappled, 0:17:12.920 --> 0:17:17.359 it's very rarely direct in places, and for that reason, 0:17:17.680 --> 0:17:20.920 you have like a much steadier kind of climate than 0:17:20.960 --> 0:17:24.240 you have at the top. And yeah, that's where that 0:17:24.320 --> 0:17:28.600 decomposition happens really really fast, so that forest soils can't 0:17:29.359 --> 0:17:32.200 don't hold in nutrients very well. Yeah, and I don't 0:17:32.200 --> 0:17:34.240 think we mentioned that there is a lot of life 0:17:34.240 --> 0:17:37.800 in the overstory as well. You're gonna find monkeys up 0:17:37.840 --> 0:17:40.720 there too. There can be a snake in a tree 0:17:40.880 --> 0:17:43.560 just live in his life one hundred and eighty feet 0:17:43.600 --> 0:17:48.080 up in the air, and bats insects, eagles, all kinds 0:17:48.119 --> 0:17:50.520 of birds. Something else I found, Chuck that I thought 0:17:50.640 --> 0:17:55.040 was fascinating is that the study of rainforest life is 0:17:55.080 --> 0:18:01.400 still kind of in its infancy because it's so hard 0:18:01.560 --> 0:18:05.959 to consistently get to these places to study this life. Yeah, 0:18:06.000 --> 0:18:09.680 isn't that fascinating? It is apparently good in a way. 0:18:09.800 --> 0:18:13.160 I saw that Now that drones are here, especially little 0:18:13.160 --> 0:18:16.800 handheld drones, it's making it much much easier and less destructive, 0:18:16.840 --> 0:18:20.200 to be honest. Yeah, that's true, So they'll probably advance, 0:18:20.240 --> 0:18:23.080 but there's still a lot more to be learned in 0:18:22.720 --> 0:18:26.480 that field. Yeah, I guess we should talk about rain 0:18:27.680 --> 0:18:30.000 because it's a rainforest and it does rain a lot. 0:18:30.520 --> 0:18:35.160 Compared to the most rainy state in the United States. 0:18:35.240 --> 0:18:40.840 Do you know what that is, Texas? It is Mississippi, Mississippi. 0:18:41.600 --> 0:18:43.640 Atlanta is pretty high up there too. I think Atlanta's 0:18:43.680 --> 0:18:45.720 top five or six, I believe it. I call it 0:18:45.800 --> 0:18:49.120 the Seattle of the South Man. Well, this is talking 0:18:49.119 --> 0:18:52.440 about total rainfall. I think that's them. You know, if 0:18:52.440 --> 0:18:54.960 you live in the Pacific Northwest, you understand this. But 0:18:55.359 --> 0:18:57.880 if you just think, like you know, Atlanta, it rains 0:18:57.920 --> 0:19:00.360 a lot more than in Seattle and Portland, but they 0:19:00.359 --> 0:19:03.200 have more days of rain, more of those drizzly, sort 0:19:03.200 --> 0:19:06.200 of dark days, whereas in Mississippi and in Atlanta in 0:19:06.240 --> 0:19:09.959 the southeast, it's just pouring hard rain to the tune 0:19:10.040 --> 0:19:12.520 of in Mississippi about five and a half feet a year. 0:19:12.960 --> 0:19:15.800 In Atlanta we get about four point three feet per year. 0:19:16.680 --> 0:19:19.480 In the Amazon, they get between six and ten feet 0:19:19.480 --> 0:19:23.359 of rainfall a year, so up up to double what 0:19:23.400 --> 0:19:25.439 the rainy t state here gets and most of it 0:19:25.520 --> 0:19:28.480 fromes to it from December to May alone during the 0:19:28.560 --> 0:19:32.360 rainy season. Yeah, I mean that's what packed in four 0:19:32.440 --> 0:19:36.840 or five months. Yeah, it's rainy. Pretty impressive. But I 0:19:36.880 --> 0:19:39.119 don't know if it's the time to visit or not. 0:19:39.280 --> 0:19:41.359 But it does not rain much in August that's the 0:19:41.440 --> 0:19:43.520 driest month, and they only get a couple of inches 0:19:43.520 --> 0:19:46.280 in August. Yeah, So I say we take a break 0:19:46.680 --> 0:19:48.720 and then come back and talk to more about the 0:19:48.760 --> 0:20:13.640 Amazon rainforest. Where do you think let's do it all? Right, 0:20:13.840 --> 0:20:17.359 we're back. We've talked a lot about animals. We're going 0:20:17.400 --> 0:20:19.879 to talk more about animals and birds and insects and 0:20:19.920 --> 0:20:22.800 all that stuff. But there's a lot of people in 0:20:22.840 --> 0:20:26.240 the Amazon rainforest. And again, like you, I think I 0:20:26.320 --> 0:20:31.200 sort of pictured it as uh, you know, these largely 0:20:31.640 --> 0:20:36.439 undisturbed tribes that are still just hunting and gathering and 0:20:36.520 --> 0:20:40.080 that's all. But that's not true. About thirty four million 0:20:40.160 --> 0:20:44.960 people live within the ring of the Amazon rainforest. Yeah, 0:20:45.000 --> 0:20:48.600 that's nuts. There's a whole city, manaus brazil Um has 0:20:48.600 --> 0:20:52.439 a population of two million in the Amazon Um. And 0:20:52.480 --> 0:20:55.920 then I think, out of those, um, how many people 0:20:55.960 --> 0:20:59.800 did you say lived there, between one and a half 0:21:00.200 --> 0:21:02.840 three are indigenous people who have lived there. These are 0:21:02.920 --> 0:21:08.280 like their ancestral lands, and a good hundred of the 0:21:08.720 --> 0:21:11.280 I think three hundred and fifty to five hundred distinct 0:21:11.400 --> 0:21:16.360 indigenous societies in the Amazon are uncontacted, which, if you'll 0:21:16.400 --> 0:21:19.640 remember our man in the whole episodes to both of them, 0:21:19.680 --> 0:21:24.280 I believe. Yeah, I think we did two episodes on them. 0:21:25.920 --> 0:21:28.960 They uncontacted doesn't mean like they're not aware people exist. 0:21:29.040 --> 0:21:31.119 They don't want what they don't want to have anything 0:21:31.119 --> 0:21:34.160 to do with outsiders, usually because of a terrible thing 0:21:34.160 --> 0:21:37.480 that befell them and or their families. Yeah, it's their thanks, 0:21:37.520 --> 0:21:41.439 but no thanks tribes exactly. So, I think like thirty 0:21:41.440 --> 0:21:44.840 five percent of the Amazon right now make up indigenous territories, 0:21:44.840 --> 0:21:47.600 which is good for the Amazon because, as we mentioned 0:21:47.640 --> 0:21:50.000 at the outset, one of the things they figured out 0:21:50.119 --> 0:21:53.359 is the best way to preserve the rainforest is to 0:21:53.440 --> 0:21:56.399 hand control of it over to the indigenous groups. So 0:21:56.440 --> 0:21:58.359 you can chuck up about thirty five percent of the 0:21:58.359 --> 0:22:04.160 Amazon is safe right now. Right. If animals are something 0:22:04.240 --> 0:22:06.399 you like to talk about, then the Amazon is a 0:22:06.400 --> 0:22:09.360 pretty great place to be because there are a lot 0:22:09.440 --> 0:22:14.399 of fauna and megafauna in the rainforest. And one of 0:22:14.440 --> 0:22:19.720 the starts of the show is certainly the jagyar. Yeah, no, 0:22:20.040 --> 0:22:25.160 for real, the jaguar. The jaguar. Yeah. If you're buying 0:22:25.200 --> 0:22:28.119 a car, it's a jaguaw. Yeah, the jaguar. I don't know, 0:22:28.600 --> 0:22:30.640 I don't know where we got the wire from, but 0:22:30.840 --> 0:22:33.720 that's what we say, right, Yeah, that's how we say it. 0:22:33.760 --> 0:22:37.600 And this is just a beautiful, beautiful beast that used 0:22:37.600 --> 0:22:41.520 to be much more common sadly in the southwestern US, 0:22:41.600 --> 0:22:44.320 even all the way down to South America in places 0:22:44.320 --> 0:22:47.320 like Argentina, but about forty percent of their range has 0:22:47.320 --> 0:22:51.359 been lost yea, in Central and South America, and not 0:22:51.520 --> 0:22:54.159 over hundreds and hundreds of years. This is in the 0:22:54.200 --> 0:22:57.080 last like thirty or forty years, and now they are 0:22:57.600 --> 0:23:02.320 considered near threatened. And these these animals like to move 0:23:02.480 --> 0:23:06.560 a lot, so they have huge, extensive ranges of hundreds 0:23:06.560 --> 0:23:09.760 of kilometers, but they just don't have them in such 0:23:09.760 --> 0:23:13.520 area anymore. Yeah. No, there's about ten thousand of them 0:23:13.520 --> 0:23:16.439 in the Amazon, which is now their largest contiguous area 0:23:16.440 --> 0:23:21.200 of habitat. But because the jaguars get so much attention, 0:23:22.119 --> 0:23:24.600 some of the other ones get ignored unless you start 0:23:24.600 --> 0:23:26.800 to dig beneath the surface, and when you do, you'll 0:23:26.800 --> 0:23:31.720 find there's the jaguarundi, the ace a lot, yeah, the Margai, 0:23:31.840 --> 0:23:35.119 the onsilla, and that last one, the onsilla is a 0:23:35.160 --> 0:23:39.520 little like five pound cat with a leopard coat that 0:23:39.680 --> 0:23:43.440 is just adorable standing on a little tree branch. They're 0:23:43.440 --> 0:23:46.959 all very beautiful, for sure, animals, but they vary in 0:23:46.960 --> 0:23:50.720 different sizes, shapes, coats, but a lot of them look 0:23:50.760 --> 0:23:53.480 like like they have a housecat head on, like a 0:23:53.520 --> 0:23:56.400 mini leopard body or something like that. It's kind of cool. 0:23:57.119 --> 0:23:59.119 I'm saving my dad jokes from now one. After the 0:23:59.160 --> 0:24:02.520 b incident, by the way, oh no, I think everybody's 0:24:02.560 --> 0:24:05.240 been been pretty much in favor that it was definitely 0:24:05.240 --> 0:24:08.240 worth while. Oh. I've had a couple of yeas and 0:24:08.280 --> 0:24:12.040 a couple of nays so far. My point that I 0:24:12.080 --> 0:24:13.560 made to one of them was like, if I wrote 0:24:13.640 --> 0:24:15.840 that joke down and told it, it's probably pretty terrible, 0:24:15.880 --> 0:24:18.439 but it was off the dome. Yeah, I thought it 0:24:18.520 --> 0:24:21.160 was great. I still, like, I wake up laughing thinking 0:24:21.160 --> 0:24:24.120 about it almost every morning, So I won't make jokes 0:24:24.160 --> 0:24:28.359 about acelots and auclttles. I'm not gonna do it anymore. 0:24:28.480 --> 0:24:30.680 I think that's a good good choice in this kid. 0:24:31.480 --> 0:24:34.760 There's also monkeys, Oh, lots of monkeys, one hundred and 0:24:34.760 --> 0:24:39.679 fifty plus species of monkey, everything you could imagine. I 0:24:39.760 --> 0:24:43.360 love how Olivia put this one. The nightmarish looking bald. 0:24:43.960 --> 0:24:46.239 I guess that's you a cary monkey. Yeah, you need 0:24:46.280 --> 0:24:49.280 to look that one up. It's oh I did it 0:24:49.359 --> 0:24:54.800 looks like the the It looks like this sounds awful 0:24:54.840 --> 0:24:57.919 to say. It looks like a monkey who had his 0:24:58.440 --> 0:25:01.720 face peeled off. Wow. Yeah, it does look like that 0:25:01.840 --> 0:25:05.639 a lot. It's just a very bright red. It looks 0:25:05.680 --> 0:25:08.040 like it a wound almost, Yeah, or like it has 0:25:08.040 --> 0:25:12.200