Wildlife of Brazil
The wildlife of Brazil comprises all naturally occurring animals, plants, and fungi in the South American country.
Home to 60% of the Amazon Rainforest, which accounts for approximately one-tenth of all species in the world,[1] Brazil is considered to have the greatest biodiversity of any country on the planet.
[5] Approximately two-thirds of all species worldwide are found in tropical areas, often coinciding with developing countries such as Brazil.
[6][7] In the animal kingdom, there is general consensus that Brazil has the highest number of both terrestrial vertebrates and invertebrates of any country in the world.
[8] This high diversity of fauna can be explained in part by the sheer size of Brazil and the great variation in ecosystems such as Amazon Rainforest, Atlantic Forest, Cerrado, Pantanal, Pampas and the Caatinga.
[8] There is a high number of endangered species,[9] many of which live in threatened habitats such as the Atlantic Forest or the Amazon Rainforest.
[10] According to a 2005 estimate by Thomas M. Lewinsohn and Paulo I. Prado, Brazil is home to around 9.5% of all the species and 13.1% of biota found in the world; these figures are likely to be underestimates according to the authors.
Because it encompasses many species-rich ecosystems for animals, fungi and plants, Brazil houses many thousands of species, with many (if not most) of them still undiscovered.
Due to the relatively explosive economic and demographic rise of the country in the last century, Brazil's ability to protect its environmental habitats has increasingly come under threat.
Extensive logging in the nation's forests, particularly the Amazon, both official and unofficial, destroys areas the size of a small country each year, and potentially a diverse variety of plants and animals.
[12] However, as various species possess special characteristics, or are built in an interesting way, some of their capabilities are being copied for use in technology (see bionics), and the profit potential may result in a retardation of deforestation.
Because of the wide variety of habitats in Brazil, from the jungles of the Amazon Rainforest and the Atlantic Forest (which includes Atlantic Coast restingas), to the tropical savanna of the Cerrado, to the xeric shrubland of the Caatinga, to the world's largest wetland area, the Pantanal, there exists a wide variety of wildlife as well.
Using only conventional microscopy, and examining living leaves collected from various plants, the mycologist Batista and his colleagues, working in Pernambuco in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, regularly recorded more than one fungal species, and sometimes up to ten on a single leaf.
[5] Although information about fungi worldwide remains very fragmented, a preliminary estimate, based only on the work of Batista, shows that the number of potentially endemic fungal species in Brazil already exceeds 2000.
[32] Currently, 15.8 million acres of tropical ecosystem have been completely eliminated to farm sugarcane for ethanol production.
