Over Thanksgiving break we went to the Kansas City Zoo for an interview with Ms. Kelly Martin, who works in the Tropical Rainforest area of the zoo. Here are some of the questions we asked her and the answers she gave us.
Q: What kind of animals live in the tropic rainforests?
A: Tropical rainforests are one of the most biologically diverse ecosystems in the world. There are thousands of animals that live there, some of them would be: the toucan, the spider-monkey, the sloth, the macaw, and many many more.
Q: What special characteristics must these animals have in order to survive?
A: This varies upon the animals and where it lives. Common characteristics found among mammals and birds (and reptiles and amphibians, too) include adaptions to a life in the trees, such as the prehensile tails of monkeys. Other characteristics are bright colors and sharp patterns, loud vocalizations, and diets heavy on fruit.
Q: Approximately how many different species of animals are known in the rainforest?
A: There are thousands of different species, many are still being discovered to this day.
Q: On what tree level (canopy, understory, etc.) do the majority of creatures live in and why?
A: Most of the creatures live in the canopy level because there are many places to live in that level and there is plenty of food.
Q: What effects does the lack of light have on the forest floor/animals?
A: Both the plants and the animals that are found on the forest floor have adapted to living there. The decomposition of plants and animals happens on the forest floor by the fungi, and the larger animals of the rainforest lives on the forest floor, such as: tigers and jaguars.
Q: What is the most predominant type of animal (herbivore, carnivore, omnivore) found in the rainforest and why?
A: All are found in the rainforest balanced food web.
Q: Can there be too much rain in the tropical rainforest? What would the effects be on the animals?
A: Yes, in fact, there has been flooding in recent years in the rainforest, when there is to much rain it has the same effects on the animals as it would have on us. The flooding often wipes out the animals homes and sources of food.
Q: How is the tropical rainforest and its animals effected by global warming?
A: They are effected by floods, droughts, changing temperatures, etc. These things make it difficult for the animals to find good areas to make their homes and it makes it harder to find food.
Q: What is the most endangered animal in the rainforest today and why?
A: That is a difficult question to answer because it depends on which tropical rainforest you are talking about, but toucans, parrots, jaguars, gorillas, poison dart frogs, manatees, bengal tigers, and chimpanzees are becoming or are already endangered.
Q: What could we do to prevent the endangerment/extinction of tropical rainforest animals?
A: To help prevent extinction and endangerment of rainforest animals, you can cut down on raw material consumption and use recycled products like paper.
So this was our interview at the zoo. If you would like to see a few pictures of tropical rainforest animals you can go to the post right before this one and see some of the pictures we took at the KC Zoo. Thanks again to Ms. Martin!
ScienceDaily (July 16, 2012) — There's no honor among thieves when it comes to rodent robbers -- which turns out to be a good thing for tropical trees that depend on animals to spread their seeds.
Results of a yearlong study in Panama, published online in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences the week of July 16, suggest that thieving rodents helped the black palm tree survive by taking over the seed-spreading role of the mighty mastodon and other extinct elephant-like creatures that are thought to have eaten these large seeds.The study showed that agoutis, rainforest rodents that hoard seeds like squirrels, repeatedly stole from their neighbors' underground seed caches. All that pilfering moved some black palm seeds far enough from the mother tree to create favorable conditions for germination.
"We knew that these rodents would bury the seeds but we had no idea that there would be this constant digging up of the seed, moving it and burying it, over and over again," says Kays, a member of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute team. "As rodents steal the same seed many, many times, it adds up to a long-distance movement of the seed that one animal by itself could have never done."
One seed was buried 36 times before an agouti dug it up and ate it. About 14 percent of the seeds survived until the following year.
The study, funded with a National Science Foundation grant, caught the furry thieves in the act via individual tags on agoutis, video surveillance of seed caches and tiny motion-activated transmitters attached to more than 400 seeds.
Applying such sophisticated animal tracking techniques to the plant world has the potential to improve scientists' understanding of forest ecology and regeneration, Kays says.
"When you think about global climate change and habitats shifting, for a forest to move into new areas, trees need to have their seeds moved into new areas. This opens up a route to study how animals can help trees adjust to climate change through seed dispersal."
Kays, a faculty member with NC State's College of Natural Resources, was part of an international team that included scientists from Ohio State University and institutions in the Netherlands, Belgium, the United Kingdom and Germany.
ScienceDaily. Retrieved November 6, 2012, from http://www.sciencedaily.com /releases/2012/07/120716151650.htm
