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WONDERS OF NATURE
Amazon river. Nature miracle
The Indians call the Amazon "Parana-Thing", which means "Queen of the Rivers". Indeed, this river is in all respects the greatest in the world. It carries a quarter of all the waters carried into the ocean by the rivers of our planet. And the area of its basin - more than seven million square kilometers - allows you to place in it the entire mainland of Australia or a country like the United States. At the mouth of the Amazon, the width of the Amazon reaches two hundred kilometers, and the depth is one hundred meters! Even at the Peruvian city of Iquitos, three and a half thousand kilometers from the mouth, the depth of the river is more than twenty meters, so ships get here.
The full flow of the Amazon can be explained simply: it flows almost exactly along the equator, and the usual summer rainy season for these places alternately occurs either in the northern hemisphere (in March-September), on its left tributaries, or in the southern (from October to April) - on the right tributaries. Thus, the great river actually lives in a constant flood. Until recently, it was not known exactly where the origins of the Amazon lie. Its length, together with the main of the two sources, the Ucayali River, was approximately determined at 6565 kilometers, which put the Queen of Rivers in second place in the world after the Nile, which is more than a hundred kilometers longer. But an international expedition organized in 1995, having reached the upper reaches of the Ucayali, discovered that this source, in turn, is formed from the confluence of two rivers: Apurimac and Urubamba. Coming to the source of the Alurimak River, the researchers determined that the total length of the entire grandiose Apurimac-Ucayali-Amazon water system is 7025 kilometers and, therefore, it is she who is the first in the world in length. The Nile with its sources the White Nile, Albert Nile, Victoria Nile, Lake Victoria Kageroy is almost three hundred kilometers shorter. I hope the reader will excuse the author for the abundance of figures, but speaking of such a giant as the Amazon, one cannot do without at least brief statistics. The Amazon has over 500 tributaries. Seventeen of them are from 1800 to 3500 kilometers long. (This, for comparison, is the length of the Don and the Volga!) The huge mass of river water carried by the Amazon desalinates the sea 400 kilometers from the mouth. The largest river island in the world, located in the Amazon delta - the island of Marajo, has an area of 48 thousand square kilometers, that is, more than Switzerland or the Netherlands, and the entire delta is larger than Bulgaria in area. The river gets its name Amazon after the confluence of the Ucayali with the Marañon River. Both sources begin in the Andes and break through to the plain through narrow rocky gorges - pongo. At the bottom of these gorges there is no place even for a narrow path - it is a continuous bubbling ferocious stream with stones sticking out here and there, sometimes narrowing to twenty meters. Particularly wayward character in Maranion. On the way from the mountains, he passes through 27 pongos. The lower, most formidable of them is Pongo de Manserice ("Gate of the Parrots"). Breaking through the last canyon, the river enters the vast plain of the Amazon and becomes navigable. The Amazonian lowland, or Amazonia, is the greatest lowland on Earth. This is a vast realm of swamps and jungles, where the only roads are rivers. However, these roads are enough in abundance - after all, the rivers of the Amazon are navigable for eight thousand kilometers. During floods, when the level of the Amazon rises by twenty meters, low banks are flooded for 80-100 kilometers in the area. Huge territories then represent an endless sea with trees sticking out of the water. In normal times, the Amazon does not look like a giant river, because it breaks into many rukayaz, separated by islands. There are also floating islands on the river, slowly moving downstream. They are formed by intertwined plant roots and fallen tree trunks, on which new vegetation has risen. The slope of the Amazonian lowland is so small that the influence of ocean tides is noticeable here even 1000 kilometers from the mouth of the river. A feature of the Amazonian tides is the famous "pororoka". From the collision of a mighty river with a tidal wave going towards the Amazon, a high shaft is formed, topped with a foamy ridge. It rolls up the river with a loud rumble, sweeping away everything in its path. Woe to a ship that does not have time to take shelter in a side channel or in a bay in advance - a roaring six-meter water wall will turn it over and sink it. From time immemorial, Indians have experienced a superstitious fear of this mysterious and formidable phenomenon, which seemed to them some kind of terrible monster, devastating the coast and terrifying with its bubbling roar. Hence the name of the formidable shaft - pororoka ("thundering water"). The first end-to-end voyage across the Amazon from the Andes to the ocean was made in 1842 by the Spanish conquistador Francisco Orellana. For eight months, his detachment sailed along the river for almost six thousand kilometers. Now it is even difficult to imagine what it cost the Spaniards this almost incredible journey across the entire continent without maps, without knowledge of the characteristics of the river and the languages of local tribes, without food supplies, on a fragile home-made boat. Crocodiles and anacondas, piranhas and river sharks - all these "charms" of the Amazon the Orellana squad had to experience, as they say, on their own skin. More than once on the way, the Spaniards had a chance to face warlike Indians. In one place, at the mouth of the Trombetas River, the fighting was especially fierce. And most of all, the conquistadors were struck by the fact that tall half-naked women armed with bows fought in the forefront of the Indian warriors. They stood out for their fearlessness even against the background of their fellow tribesmen. The brave warriors reminded the Spaniards of the ancient myth of the Amazons - female warriors who did not know defeat. Therefore, Orellana named the river Amazon. Since then, many scientists and researchers have visited the great river. The Frenchman Condamine, the German Humboldt, the Englishman Bates and the Russian traveler Langsdorf at the end of the XNUMXth - beginning of the XNUMXth century managed to penetrate the jungle of the Amazon and discovered for science the amazing living world of the Queen of the Rivers and the surrounding humid forests. The waters of the local rivers are home to 2000 species of fish - a third of the diversity of the freshwater fish kingdom of the Earth. (There are only 300 species in all the rivers of Europe.) Among the unique inhabitants of the Amazon are a giant five-meter pyraruku (or arapaima), reaching 200 kilograms of weight, a two-meter electric eel that knocks a person down with a current discharge of 300 volts, huge river stingrays with a deadly spike on their tail , a dangerous river shark and a small toothy piranha that terrifies the locals. The aggressiveness of this predatory creature is indescribable. A hunter who has shot a wild boar or a tapir from a boat often does not have time to swim with a trophy in tow to the shore: from a hefty carcass, a flock of bloodthirsty fish leaves one skeleton. It happens that for the successful passage of the herd across the river, the shepherds have to sacrifice one cow, which, having previously been injured, is brought into the water below the crossing. While the piranhas deal with the victim, the rest of the animals have time to cross the ford. Even a vicious predator caught on a bait desperately wriggles in the hands of a fisherman, striving to bite off his finger with razor-sharp teeth. There are also huge manatees in the Amazon - relatives of the sea cow, and river dolphins, and five-meter crocodiles - black caimans, the victims of which are often not only two-meter tapirs or miniature peccary pigs who came to the watering hole, but also careless hunters. True, the Indians still say that "one big crocodile is better than three small piranhas"... But perhaps the most famous inhabitant of the Amazonian waters is the monstrous anaconda water boa. There are anacondas up to 12 meters long and two meters in girth! However, hunters talk about fifteen and even eighteen meter snakes. It is difficult even to imagine such a "living pipe" that could reach the ground, hanging from the roof of a six-story building. Places where anacondas are found, and experienced Indian hunters bypass. Not a single animal in the selva (as the Amazonian forests are called in Brazil) can resist the two-hundred-kilogram giantess. Sometimes even jaguars swimming across the river become victims of the anaconda. And on the smooth surface of calm oxbows and bays in the countless arms of the Amazon, one and a half meter leaves of the largest water lily in the world, Victoria Regia, sway. Round, with upturned edges, they resemble some strange green frying pans. On such a sheet, like Thumbelina, a child of twelve or fourteen years old can sit quietly. The Amazon rainforest is the richest in terms of number of species of all the forests growing on our planet. On ten square kilometers, you can count up to 1500 different types of flowers, 750 types of trees, more than a hundred different mammals, 400 species of birds and many snakes, amphibians and insects. Many of them are still unknown and not described. The largest selva trees reach 90 meters in height and 12 meters in girth. Even their names sound like music: bertolecia, mamorana, cinnamon, cedrella, babasu, rattan, hevea... Many of them are of great value. Tall Bertholets are famous for their delicious nuts. In one shell, weighing several kilograms, there are up to two dozen of these nuts. They are collected only in calm weather, as the "packing" torn off by the wind can lay down a careless picker on the spot. The sweet and nutritious juice of the milk tree resembles milk in taste, and cocoa is obtained from the fruits of the chocolate tree. Everyone, of course, has heard about the fruits of the melon tree - papaya, and about hevea, the main rubber plant of the modern world, and about the cinchona tree, the bark of which gives humanity the only remedy to relieve attacks of malaria, this scourge of tropical forests. There are many trees in the selva with beautiful colored wood, like the pau-brazil mahogany, which gave the name to the largest country in South America. And the wood of the balsa tree is the lightest in the world. It is lighter than cork. Indians build giant jangada rafts from balsa, floating timber down the Amazon, Rio Negro, Madeira and other large rivers. Such rafts sometimes reach hundreds of meters in length and twenty in width, so that an entire village is sometimes placed on them. But most of all in the Amazon of palm trees - over a hundred species! Almost all of them: coconut, babasu, tukuma, mukata, bakaba, zhupati and karana - benefit a person. Some - with their nuts, others - with wood, others - with fiber, fourth - with fragrant juice. And only the rattan palm is mercilessly cursed by the inhabitants of the selva. This is the longest tree on earth (sometimes it reaches three hundred meters!) - in essence, a liana. Its thin trunk is all dotted with sharp spikes. Clinging to other trees with them, the rattan palm reaches up towards the sun. Intertwining tree branches and trunks, it forms absolutely impenetrable thorny thickets. No wonder the Indians call it the "devil's rope." Animals - inhabitants of the selva - are no less diverse than plants. This is the largest animal of the Amazon - the shy and cautious tapir, and the giant capybara - the world champion among rodents. (Imagine a good-natured "mouse" weighing two pounds!) There are also many monkeys here, and they are completely different from their counterparts from Africa or Asia. Among them are the creepy uakiri, or "dead head", whose white muzzle resembles the skull of a dead person, and spider monkeys that use their tail as a "fifth hand". Even in the zoo, they do not stretch their paw through the bars for a handout, but their tail. Tiny marmosets live here, the largest of which weigh less than a hundred grams, and solid capuchins, striking because of their unusual appearance: the hair on their heads resembles a monk's hood. But the most famous of all the local monkeys, of course, are howler monkeys. Their voices, which cannot even be compared with the roar of a lion or a tiger, are carried around the neighborhood for five kilometers! The main enemy of monkeys and the most dangerous predatory beast of the Amazon - the jaguar - deftly makes its way along the branches of trees. By the way, he is the only cat who spends half his life in the water. If it was not possible to profit from anything on land, he will willingly eat a fish, turtle or capybara, or even a young tapir. The jaguar also copes with small crocodiles (but large ones, in turn, are not averse to eating a "waterfowl cat"). Not as formidable as the jaguar, but the handsome ocelot is also dangerous. This one and a half meter cat is not afraid to attack even two-meter anacondas! And in December, ocelots arrange mating concerts at night, like our March cats. The most inconspicuous and inactive beast of the selva is, of course, the sloth. He spends his whole life hanging with his back down on the branches of trees and slowly absorbing the foliage around him. In order not to move, he manages to turn his head not even 180, but 270 degrees! This phlegmatic breathes only once every eight seconds. On land, if it happens to descend to the ground, the sloth moves at a speed of 20 centimeters per minute, as in slow motion filming. The "agile simpleton", as the Brazilians jokingly call him, is a tasty prey for the jaguar, and for the ocelot, and for the boa constrictor, and even for the harpy eagle. The sloth is saved by the fact that ... algae start up in its wool, coloring its skin in a protective greenish color. Because of this, the immobile sloth is almost invisible on the branch, and the predator often does not notice it. Under the canopy of branches in the darkness of the night, vampire bats silently sweep by. Their small thin teeth are so sharp that a person bitten in a dream does not feel pain and only, waking up in the morning, finds that the pillow is covered in blood, and there is a tiny wound on the neck. Of the hundreds of species of birds in the selva, the most famous in our country, of course, are tiny, the size of a bee, hummingbirds and huge, up to a meter long, macaw parrots. Their bright plumage, as well as the sparkling wings of numerous butterflies, enliven the monotonous greenery of the forest. And above the crowns of the trees, the most terrible feathered predator of the Amazon - the crested tropical eagle harpy-monkey-eater soars. Powerful muscles and five-centimeter claws make the harpy a real thunderstorm for small monkeys and sloths. There are many snakes in the forests of the Amazon basin, including poisonous ones. It is no coincidence that Brazil ranks first in the world in terms of the number of people who die each year from snake bites. But the Indians have long tamed small boas and kept them in huts to protect them from rodents and snakes. A huge tarantula spider strikes and terrifies. It feeds on careless hummingbirds caught in its wide, like a fishing net, web. And Indian children, for the sake of mischief, sometimes put a rope loop on this spider and lead it around the village like a dog. But the worst thing for the inhabitants of the selva is not formidable predators and poisonous snakes and spiders, but small sacasaya ants. They live in large colonies underground, but from time to time they emerge from there in huge hordes and move through the forest in a deadly river, destroying all life in their path. Animals, birds, snakes and frogs - everyone is fleeing in a panic from a million-strong merciless army: after all, neither the jaguar nor the anaconda will be spared from the countless red-haired "crusaders"! There was a case when a camp of zoologists in the jungle was on the way of a column of ants. People managed to escape, but the tapir locked in a cage was gnawed alive by insects, so that only the skeleton remained. And yet the Amazon should not be considered only a place of nightmares. The Amazon basin is the largest array of tropical rainforests on Earth, the main supplier of oxygen to our atmosphere. And it is not for nothing that this region is called the "green lungs of the planet." And the wealth of its flora and fauna is an invaluable treasure given to us by nature. Alas, people are increasingly stepping into the selva, laying roads, cutting down forests, destroying animals and birds. The scale of this offensive is impressive. Every hour the selva loses four square kilometers of its green attire. If this continues, in the XNUMXst century we, following the disappearance of the jungles of the Congo, will lose the forests of the Amazon. And this will be an irreparable loss for humanity. Author: B.Wagner
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