Hey kids, do you know where you can find more living things in one place than anywhere else in the world?  In a tropical rainforest!

Rainforests are exactly what their name suggests: warm, dense forests that are very wet.Tropical rainforests are found close to the Earth’s equator, and they are home to millions of plant and animals. In school science, we can learn the four layers of the rainforest.

Towering above all the other parts of the rainforest are emergents: giant trees taller than any other in the rainforest that stick up above their neighbours. Emergents are homes to many birds and insects.

The canopy is the leafy part of the rainforest, made up of the tops of the trees. The canopy grows so thick and close together that rain falling on it can take 10 minutes to reach the ground!  Many amazing plants and animals are found here, including sloths. Sloths have long toes that they use to hang upside down from branches; they spend most of their lives upside-down, and will eat, sleep, and even give birth upside down!  Sloths are also famous for being the slowest animals on earth. They are so slow that algae grows in their fur and turns them green!

Under the canopy but above the ground is the understory of the rainforest. It consists mainly of the trunks of trees and the vines and other plantlife that grows over them. Many flowers grow in the understory, and thousands of birds and butterflies find their food there.

Finally, we reach the lowest part of the rainforest: the forest floor. It is home to millions of insects, and some of the largest animals in the rainforest also live there.

School science tells us that it’s important to preserve the rainforest because of all the plants and animals that live  there, but one of the most interesting facts about rainforests is that the trees also provide much of the air that we breathe! Rainforests are also important because the cures to many illnesses have been found in the plants that grow there.

Here are some other interesting facts about tropical rainforests:

The largest butterfly in the world is the Queen Alexandra’s Birdwing butterfly from the rainforests of Papua New Guinea. This massive butterfly has a wingspan of 30 cm, and it’s also poisonous! The caterpillars eat a poisonous rainforest plant, which means that any predators that try to eat a Queen Alexandra’s birdwing get very sick, and soon learn to leave all of them alone.

The rainforests of Sumatra are home to the largest flower in the world – which is also the smelliest.  The corpse flower has a blossom over a metre wide, and it gives off a stench like rotting flesh that can be smelled up to 800 metres away!

The Congo rainforest in Africa has its very own unicorns! Okapi are deerlike animals related to giraffes, with striped legs like a zebra. They have two horns on their heads, but if you look at an okapi from the right angle, the two horns look like one. This earned them their nickname of “African unicorns.”

And the coolest thing about rainforests is that there are so many plants and animals in them that we haven’t discovered them all yet! Maybe you can visit a rainforest and discover a new species someday.

Post by Sarah

Hey kids, what do you think is the most unexplored part of our planet?  It’s not the depths of the rainforest. It’s not the burning deserts. It’s not even the frozen Arctic waste. The most unexplored parts of our planet are our oceans!  We’re just beginning to realize what kind of incredible mysteries are hidden in the deep, dark waters.

Our oceans make up a huge part of our planet – over 70% of the Earth’s surface is covered by them! They help control the temperature of the planet, shape the weather, and are home to millions of living things.

The deepest part of our planet is the Mariana trench, near Japan and the Philippines. At it’s deepest point, it reaches 10,924 metres (or 6.78 miles) deep. That means if you were to take Mount Everest, the highest mountain on Earth, and stick it at the deepest part of this trench, there would still be more than 2 kilometers of water over the top of it!

Fortunately, scientists have invented special deep water research cameras and vehicles that can reach into the cold, dark, high-pressure world of the deep sea. And what we’re starting to discover is that these dark, deep, freezing waters are filled with living things. Go down deep enough, and the living things you find look like aliens from another world; it’s discovering these strange creatures that makes science fun!

Imagine yourself stranded on the bottom of the ocean, with cold black water all around you. Suddenly, you see a light wiggling around in front of you. You’re drawn toward it, and wonder if maybe it’s something good to eat. You reach for it… and find yourself face-to-face with a mouthful of razor sharp teeth! You’ve just met an anglerfish.

An anglerfish is a hunter whose body is camouflaged to look like the floor of the ocean. In the middle of its head is a long tentacle with a sac on the end filled with glowing bacteria. The anglerfish hides itself on the ocean floor, and wiggles its tentacle around. Unsuspectitng fish are attracted to the worm-like tentacle, thinking it might make a tasty meal, and snap! They are chomped up by the anglerfish’s jaws, which look just like a mouth full of knives!

Have you ever seen those little grey pillbugs that you can find in the garden? They look like tiny grey tanks, and roll up into an armoured ball if they are threatened. Well at the bottom of the ocean, you can find an animal that looks just like one of those pillbugs – only it’s over a foot long!

But one of the most fearsome creatures in the ocean is the famous giant squid. For many years, people thought the giant squid was just a legend. Then whale watchers started to notice marks on the sides of some whales, like they’d been caught by a suction cup that was the size of a dinner plate! Finally, the bodies of some squid washed up on the shores of Newfoundland, and the squid went from science fiction to science fact! They can grow up to 13 metres long, and are wicked predators, snaring prey with the serrated suction cups on their tentacles and devouring them with their sharp beaks.

Even though we think we’ve explored the planet, we’ve really just scratched the surface. There’s a whole world left to explore under the sea!

Post by Sarah