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Funny and Freaky Animals in the Amazon
Funny and Freaky Animals in the Amazon
By Ella Stainwright
This year
we have been to so many places, but none like the Amazon. It was full of flora and fauna. We saw so many cool and funny animals, along with
species of plants I have never even heard of. There were freaky things too, such as...
I'll tell
you about it.
Frogs in the Bedroom
While we
were staying in the Amazon there were a lot of frogs in the bedroom - it was one
of the first things we learnt. I had to check
the bathroom before Kaelie went in. I checked
behind the door, in the shower, in the sink and in the toilet. Once, I looked in the toilet and found a frog,
so I asked Daddy to get rid of it. He splashed
it and when I looked in to see how it was going, it jumped out and I screamed. There was another time where there was a frog
on the wall and it moved so weirdly it freaked me out. It walked with its legs twisted and dangling down. Its legs were very long, for a frog, and looked
even longer when it jumped.
Monkeys and Coatis
We also saw
some coatis running along a branch across the river. It was Kaelie who identified them as coatis because
she recognised their noses from Iguazu. The
rest of us thought they were monkeys.Stinky Turkeys (Hoazin Birds)
The Stinky
Turkeys were really cool. We saw loads of
them, almost as many as the monkeys. They
were a bit stinky but we couldn't really smell it. They only smell because of the food they eat,
so the poo stinks as well. We saw one fly
across the water, poop half way, try to land on a branch, fail and fall, splash,
into the water.Cool but Freaky Insects
There were
many insects in the Amazon. Some in the bedroom,
lots in the jungle. We once saw a mouse spider
in the bathroom, that made Kaelie cry and refuse to use the bathroom. We also saw a huge tarantula in the jungle, but
I could only see it's hairy butt. Other spiders
we discovered were the crab and scorpion spiders.
Besides spiders
we also saw other insects such as locusts, beetles and leaf cutter ants.
When we went
for a night walk we saw lots of locusts.
Some looked like leaves, some sticks but all were ‘freaky-cool’. We saw one locust shed its shell, which was really
cool and amazing because most people don't get to see that. We also saw a golden beetle that looked like a
golden dot of paint on a leaf.
There were
leaf cutter ants all around the lodge walking on paths they had made themselves. They were almost always carrying leaves of a special
type. We followed their trail that started
at the forest and went to four or five ant holes. We also saw them in the jungle and we had to be
careful not to step on them.
Caimans
Snakes
We saw three
snakes in the Amazon. One was a Black Anaconda. I found it hard to tell the difference between
the head and body until the head moved when we were up close. We also saw an Amazonian Boa that was breaking
into a bird's nest. The nest was shaped like
a handbag and the boa slid into it easily.
The last snake was a green parrot snake in the roof of the hammock room. It was small and chasing a frog. All the snakes were very cool.
Birds
We saw so
many birds in the Amazon, too many to count, so I'll tell you my favourites.
There were
the yellow and blue parakeets. They were
beautiful, but they didn't hang around for long. There was also the Great Ani. It was a big, black bird that we saw a lot of and
it seemed powerful to me. We saw two sets
of woodpeckers. We watched them peck wood
and fly from tree to tree. Then there was
my favourite - the owl. We only saw one,
on a night canoe and it turned its head almost all the way around to look at us. It was amazing.
Sloth
We were lucky
to see a sloth during our time in the Amazon.
It was moving! It looked grey, but
was really brown and hairy. It was moving
to get food, but that was dangerous because he was likely to get seen by his predator,
the vulture. The sloth was unbelievably cool.
Pink Dolphins and Giant Fish
On two of
our canoe excursions, we spotted pink dolphins.
We expected them to be bright pink and showing off, but we were wrong. They were very shy and were pinky-grey. Pink dolphins turn pink when they are more active,
like humans do when they exercise. They also
get pink as they get older. They didn't jump
out of the water, more came up for air and they were hard to find once they had
gone down. There was also a giant fish around
where the dolphins were and we once thought it was a dolphin. They are very protective of their homes and babies,
and they can send a boat spinning with one flick of their tail.
We spent
five days in the Amazon, but it should have been ten. The things that we saw and did were amazing,
but another five days in the jungle would have been too good to be true. We had so many funny moments, saw so many cool
things, learnt so much and had the time of our lives.
