The rainforest is a mind-boggling world, best experienced at dawn or dusk from a canopy tower deep in the forest, where the incredible abundance and variety of life harbored within its ecosystem can truly be appreciated. Roughly speaking, species already accounted for in the rainforest include 80,000 trees; 3,000 land vertebrates; 2,000 freshwater fish; almost half the world’s 8,500 species of birds; 1,200 different kinds of butterflies. Among these diverse life forms, many of them endemic to the region, there are all sorts of weird and wonderful creatures: a monkey small enough to sit in the palm of your hand (pigmy marmoset); the world’s largest rodent (capybara); the world’s biggest snake (anaconda); and the world’s noisiest animal (the howler monkey, whose voice can carry as far as 10 miles).
Some of our favorite foods come from the Amazon: chocolate (cacao), cinnamon, cola, ginger, cashews, black pepper, cayenne pepper, avocado, eggplant, sugarcane, vanilla and figs. Many medicinal plants have been found in the rainforest, such as quinine for malaria and curare, used by Amazonian hunters to paralyze prey, and in western medicine as a muscle relaxant during operations and for Parkinson’s disease.
Some of these plants were first documented and brought to the attention of the world by the great Prussian naturalist and explorer, Baron Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859). With his companion, the French medical doctor/botanist Aime-Jacques-Alexandre Goujoud Bonpland (1773-1858), between 1799 and 1805 they explored the coast of Venezuela, the Amazon and Orinoco Rivers, and much of Peru, Ecuador, Colombia and Mexico. They covered some 60,000 km (37,000 miles) and recorded some 60,000 samples.
On their many expeditions, Humboldt and Bonpland collected plant, animal, and mineral specimens, studied electricity (including discovering the first animal that produced electricity, Electrophorus electricus, the electric eel), did extensive mapping of northern South America, climbed mountains (and set altitude records on Chimborazo, Ecuador’s highest peak at 6,310 m (20,700 ft), observed astronomical phenomena, and performed many scientific observations. The Ecuadorian scientist Carlos Montúfar (who later gave his life to the struggle for Independence against Spain) accompanied them on part of the trip.
Humboldt was the first European to witness native South Americans preparing curare arrow poison from a vine. He was also the first person to recognize the need to preserve the cinchona plant (its bark contains quinine, which is used to cure malaria, and it was terribly over-harvested at the time). Humboldt was the first person to make accurate drawings of Inca ruins in South America (he visited the ruins in Cañar Province, today known as Ingapirca). Humboldt and Bonpland also discovered and mapped the Casiquiare Canal, the only natural canal in the world that connects two major rivers (the Orinoco River and the Negro River, a tributary of the Amazon). Humboldt was the first person to discover the importance of guano (the dried droppings from fish-eating birds); it is an excellent fertilizer. During his investigations into why the interior of Peru was so dry while on the coast of the Pacific, he discovered what is today called the Humboldt Current.
On his journeys, Humboldt changed the course of many scientific fields. He was the first to truly appreciate the wide diversity of life in the tropics and consequently the first to understand how vast the number of plant and animal species in the world might be.