Rainforests are the world's powerhouses, the most vital habitats on the planet. Characterised by high rainfall, they only cover 6% of the Earth across the tropical regions, but they contain more than half of its plant and animal species. Fast-growing trees form a dense canopy that prevents much sunlight reaching the forest floor and discourages undergrowth. The canopy is where it's at, and it hums with an incredible diversity of life.
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Logging dilemma
The rainforests are shrinking, but it's not the locals who profit.
Monsoon rains
The monsoon creates lush rainforest, but it's hard on the inhabitants.
Amazon rainforest
The planet's largest expanse of tropical rainforest is home to the widest variety of life on Earth.
Jungle regeneration
Time-lapse illustrates the vigorous race for light, and life, set off by a tree fall.
Dropping into the Gomantong Caves
TV producer James Brickell finds that hell on Earth is very much alive and crawling with insect life when he abseils into a cave in Borneo.
African fish eagle
Red kite
Temminck's tragopan
Demoiselle crane
White-fronted bee-eater
King bird of paradise
Raggiana bird of paradise
Six-wired bird of paradise
Superb bird of paradise
Vogelkop bowerbird
Wire-tailed manakin
Knot
Marvellous spatuletail
Brown-throated sloth
Giant anteater
Common blossom bat
Greater bulldog bat
Little bent-wing bat
Straw-coloured fruit bat
Giant river otter
Jaguar
Leopard
Otter
Puma
Raccoon
South American coati
South American grey fox
Spectacled bear
Tiger
Southern three-banded armadillo
Tiger quoll
Malayan colugo
Hippopotamus
Doria's Tree-Kangaroo
Matschie's tree-kangaroo
Yellow-bellied glider
Aye-aye
Bald uakari
Black-crested gibbon
Bornean orangutan
Chimpanzee
Common woolly monkey
Eastern Gorilla
François' langur
Indri
Verreaux's sifaka
Western gorilla
Western red colobus
African bush elephant
Asian elephant
Forest elephant
Capybara
Tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forests (TSMF), also known as tropical moist forests, are a tropical and subtropical forest biome.
Tropical and subtropical forest regions with lower rainfall are home to tropical and subtropical dry broadleaf forests and tropical and subtropical coniferous forests. Temperate rain forests also occur in certain humid temperate coastal regions.
The biome includes several types of forests:
Tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forests are common in several terrestrial ecozones, including parts of the Afrotropic (equatorial Africa), Indomalaya (parts of the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia), the Neotropic (northern South America and Central America), Australasia (eastern Indonesia, New Guinea, northern and eastern Australia), and Oceania (the tropical islands of the Pacific Ocean). About half of the world's tropical rainforests are in the South American countries of Brazil and Peru. Rain forests now cover less than 6% of Earth's land surface. Scientists estimate that more than half of all the world's plant and animal species live in tropical rain forests.
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