the.com/rainforest
Earth's oldest party, throwing the same wild ecosystem rave for 70 million years straight.
means A dense, tall forest in a region of consistently heavy rainfall, teeming with an extraordinary diversity of plants and animals — found in both tropical and cooler temperate zones.
from A transparent compound of "rain" and "forest," but a surprisingly modern one: the word is a 20th-century calque (a word-for-word translation) of the German "Regenwald," coined by botanists describing the wet tropics. "Rain" traces back through Old English "regn" to a Germanic root shared with German "Regen"; "forest" arrives via Old French from Medieval Latin "forestis," meaning woodland kept outside the cultivated bounds — possibly from Latin "foris," "outside." So the name itself is young, even if the thing it describes is ancient.
- oxygen myth
- Amazon's net oxygen output is roughly zero, fully self-consumed
- hidden majority
- Half of all species live in rainforests
- undiscovered
- Most rainforest species remain completely unknown to science
- flying rivers
- Trees release moisture forming airborne rivers above the canopy
- dark floor
- Only two percent of sunlight reaches the ground
amazon rainforest — 5.5 million km² spanning brazil, peru, colombia, and 9 other countries
congo rainforest — 2.3 million km² in central africa, second largest tropical rainforest
daintree rainforest — 1,200 km² in queensland, australia, 180 million years old