35 Animals That Live In The (Amazon) Rainforest 2022
The Amazon Rainforest is a rich, dense, tropical rainforest found in South America. It stretches from the Atlantic Ocean to the Andes Mountains and from the Guiana highlands in the north to the Brazilian central plateau in the South. It has the richest biodiversity of anywhere on Earth.
There are over three million species of Amazon Rainforest animals that call this region home, from tiny amphibians the size of your fingernail to big cats and exotic birds. The dense vegetation of the Amazon Rainforest is made up of over 2,500 tree species, and countless species of fungi and other plants.
Sadly, this incredible ecosystem is facing destruction. Logging, intensive agriculture and farming, as well as human expansion, are all contributing towards the destruction of the Amazon Rainforest, causing declines in wildlife populations. We need to start protecting this majestic rainforest before it’s too late!
1. Black-capped Squirrel Monkey
© dreamstimeThese cute little squirrel monkeys are just nine to 15 inches long! They are named after the black, circular patch of fur on the top of their heads that looks just like a hat. Black-capped squirrel monkeys have yellowish-green fur and white faces.
They lead arboreal lives, spending their time up in the canopy away from the reach of predators. Highly social creatures, these New World monkeys form groups of about 50 individuals, although their groups can have up to 550 individuals! They love to play, and communicate with one another through squawks, purrs, barks, and loud screams.
2. Black Caiman
© dreamstimeBlack caimans are the largest alligator species on Earth. They are aquatic reptiles that live in shallow, freshwater rivers, streams, and lakes in the Amazon. Males usually measure around 13 feet, but individuals up to 16.4 feet long have been spotted! Females are slightly smaller and tend to measure some 10 feet. They can weigh anywhere between 800–1,000 pounds.
These ferocious alligators are an apex predator, meaning they hunt but aren’t hunted. They feed on fish (even piranhas) amphibians, invertebrates, insects, birds, and large mammals. If you saw one, you’d quickly recognize it because of its black, scaly skin.
3. Toucan
© dreamstimeThese exotic birds are easily spotted by a glance at their long, colorful beaks. From beak to tail they measure some 25 inches, but nearly half of that is just beak! They have black plumage on their bodies, white throat feathers and a mix of short black, red, and white tail feathers.
Their beak is bright orange, with a strip of red along the top and bottom and a black patch on the end of their top beak. It’s still a mystery why these birds have evolved such extravagant beaks, perhaps it’s to alure partners or for self-defense. They also use them to pick and peel fruit; figs are some of their favorites!
4. Pink River Dolphin
© dreamstimeThe pink river dolphin is one of just five freshwater dolphin species left on Earth, and it’s the largest of the five! They are named after their light pink coloring, but did you know that they are born gray and get their pink hue later on? Males are also more pink than females.
They aren’t just the largest freshwater dolphin species; they also have the largest brains of the bunch. It is estimated they have 40% more brain capacity than humans. They can grow to nine feet long and like to chat to one another using high-frequency clicks. Pink river dolphins eat over 53 species of fish, including piranhas!
5. Capybara
© dreamstimeCapybaras are the world’s largest rodents. They are quite peculiar looking and have partially webbed feet. They live on riverbanks, near ponds or in marshy, boggy landscapes. It’s essential for a capybara to be by a source of water, where they can munch on nearby water plants and keep their skin from drying out with periodical swims.
These large rodents use their sharp, overgrown front teeth to cut grasses and water plants as they graze. They can eat up to eight pounds worth of vegetation in a day! They live in groups of about 10 individuals and are always on the look-out for jaguars.
6. Puma
© dreamstimePumas are also called cougars, panthers, or mountain lions. In fact, these animals have 40 names in English alone and hold the Guiness record for the animal with the most names! An adult puma weighs about 136 pounds.
These predatorial carnivores hunt their own food, mostly at night or in the early hours of the morning. These agile hunters can leap up to 25 feet in a chase. They eat small mammals that they kill with a deadly bite to the back of the neck. It can take them a week or more to eat their catch, so they hide it out of sight in-between meals.
7. Bearded Emperor Tamarin
© dreamstimeBearded emperor tamarins have speckled brown, black, and white fur and a long, curly white mustache. Their mustaches curls downwards and give this little tamarin species a rather sophisticated appearance. Bearden emperor tamarins live in matriarchal groups of two to 15 individuals.
They are just 10 inches long and weigh one pound! Their prehensile, 15-inch tails are much longer than their bodies and help them to move between trees and high up in the canopy. They mostly feed on fruit, but supplement their diets with small insects, eggs they snatch from bird’s nests, and nectar.
8. Blue Morpho Butterfly
© dreamstimeThese magnificent butterflies are among the largest in the world! They have bright, electric blue wings that are black around the edges, and speckled with small white dots. Their wings are some five to eight inches wide and colored a meek brown underneath to help them hide from birds and insects when they aren’t in flight.
Blue morpho butterflies have six legs and two antenna that detect scents and tastes from the air, acting as the butterflies’ nose and tongue. Like all butterflies, they have a straw like mouthpart, the proboscis, that they use to slurp the juice of rooting food, like fruit, fungi, decomposing meat, and tree sap.
9. Poison Dart Frog
© dreamstimePoison dart frogs are miniscule, and very venomous. These tiny amphibians are no wider than the tip of your fingernail, and about as tall as a paperclip. Their bodies are brightly colored, with variation in coloration across habitats, to scare off predators. This self-defense mechanism is known as aposematic coloration.
The deadliest of them all, the golden poison frog, is just two inches long and has enough poison to kill 10 men, or 20,000 mice! They feed on small insects, like ants and fruit flies, that they catch on the end of their prehensile, sticky tongues.
10. Amazonian Tapir
© dreamstimeThese peculiar looking mammals have short, silky brown fur and long, comical snouts. Their snouts stick out over their mouths and end in two wide nostrils. Curiously, it’s prehensile, and used to breathe when the animal is swimming or to grasp leaves.
Amazonian tapirs have very poor eyesight, probably a product of their nocturnal lifestyle. But it isn’t too much of a problem as they have a highly developed sense of smell. Their favorite foods are fruits, shoots, leaves, and buds. They have a few land predators in the wild and are quick to jump into the water to flee!
11. Green Iguana
© dreamstimeThese enormous lizards are among the most impressive reptile species. They reach lengths of 6.6 feet and weigh some 11 pounds. Green iguanas are adapted to most terrains; they’re great climbers and swimmers and move quickly on land. They have been known to jump off tree branches up to 40 feet high when a predator shows up!
Along their backs they have long, pointy spines that help deter predators. They have specialized cone cells that allow them to see ultraviolet light and can regrow their tails quickly after breaking it off to escape from a predator’s mouth.
12. Spangled Cotinga
© dreamstimeIt would be hard to miss a spangled cotinga. Males have electric blue plumage, with striped blue and black wing feathers, a dark pink throat, and short black tail feathers. On the contrary, females are rather bleak and have brown feathers ― far less exotic looking.
Spangled cotingas are frugivorous, feeding mainly on different rainforest fruits. Although, they do sometimes eat insects to supplement their sweet diet. Something that distinguishes these birds from other Amazonian species, is that they don’t sing or make any vocalizations. The only noise you’ll hear coming from this bird is a light whistling sound that their wings make as they fly.
13. Harpy Eagle
© dreamstimeThese large, imposing birds could definitely give you a fright! Their wingspan alone can reach lengths of 7.4 feet. They are the largest raptors in the Amazon Rainforest and sit at the top of the food chain. They can fly at top speeds of 50 miles per hour!
They have large, curled claws at the end of their long legs that can easily snatch monkeys, lizards, sloths, or snakes from the forest floor! Their gray head feathers are double crested and rise when the bird is alert, giving them a hostile and unfriendly appearance.
14. Glass Frog
© dreamstimeThese fascinating frogs are about the size of the palm of your hand. The tops of their bodies are lime green and look just like an ordinary frog’s would. Unlike their underbodies, that are transparent, providing a close-up view of their internal organs!
Male glass frogs go to extremes to guard the eggs laid by females, and sometimes even have patterns on the tops of their bodies that mimics the egg pattern to distract predators. They live high up in branches above streams; in small groups called an army. Individuals only come down to nearby streams during the mating season. They can jump more than 10 feet in a single leap!
15. Red Piranha
© dreamstimePiranhas are one of the most notorious animals in the Amazon rainforest. Red-bellied piranhas have the sharpest and strongest teeth of all 20 species of piranha found in the Amazon River. They grow to 20 inches in length and hunt in groups of 100 or more individuals.
They have shiny scales that glimmer in the water and are a light red around their bellies. Piranhas have gotten a bad reputation as scary, man-eating fish ― but they tend to only attack prey slightly larger, or smaller, than themselves.
16. Peanut Head Bug
Peanut head bugs look like something from another planet. They have brown bodies that are structurally similar to a crickets, but are characterized by a long, peanut-shaped protrusion that extends outwards off the end of their head.
They are some 3.4 inches long and feed mainly on tree sap. They have various clever self-defense tactics that they use to protect themselves from predators, like fake eyes on their wings that make them look larger and more aggressive, and fake, serpent-like eyes on their peanut head that scare off birds.
17. Macaw
© dreamstimeThere are lots of different macaw species in the Amazon rainforest, like the Hyacinth macaw. These exotic birds have been marveled at for centuries because of their bright colors and intellect. Some Macaw species can mimic human speech or perform tricks. They are social and chatty birds, that live in groups.
Macaws come in bright greens, reds, yellows, and blues and range in length from just 12 inches to 40 inches. They have long tail feathers and hooked beaks. They feed on fruits, seeds, nuts, and berries.
18. Royal Flycatcher
© dreamstimeThese little birds are about five to seven inches long and covered in bleak, brown plumage with burgundy tail feathers, a white throat, and an orange underbelly. They aren’t very impressive to look at, until they raise their brightly colored crest feathers! Their crest feathers come in bright yellows and reds and are decorated with blue edges and black dots.
There are two subspecies in the Amazon Rainforest, and some 45 species in the family overall. They rarely display their crests, that are reserved for mating displays.
19. Jesus Lizard
© dreamstimeMore formally known as the green basilisk lizard, this reptile gets its peculiar common name from its unique ability to run on water. They can also submerge themselves underwater and stay there for up to 10 minutes. They spend most of their time up in trees, close to a source of water.
Jesus Lizards have a unique way of escaping predators that attack them up in the tree branches; they drop into the water and run on their back legs at speeds of five feet per second! They are green, and have two rounded, scaly crests on the tops of their heads and a fringe that runs along their back.
20. Sloth
© dreamstimeSloths are famously known for their slowness. Their slow-paced lifestyle is the product of their low-calorie, leafy diet that provides them with very little energy to move around, especially at high speeds. There are six different species of sloths, all of which are found in the Amazon.
They are divided into two-toes and three-toed sloths based on the number of claws on their forelimbs. Sloths are tree dwelling animals, that spend up to 20 hours of their day asleep on a branch, usually hanging upside down and gripping on with their sharp claws.
21. Collared Anteater
© dreamstimeCollared anteaters have light, cream-colored fur with a patch of black fur that gives the impression the animal is wearing a vest. There is a light stripe of fur that runs down the animals back, opening up its elusive vest. Their bodies are about 26 inches long, with a long 12–inch tail hanging off the end.
They roam through the forest at night, in search of ants and termites they can suck up. They also eat earthworms, honey, insect larvae, and bird eggs. They rest in burrows left behind by other animals or hollow tree trunks.
22. Kinkajou
© dreamstimeThese strange looking mammals are covered in short, light orange fur. They are some 17–22 inches long and have tails of the same length. They are arboreal, spending much of their time up among the tree branches. Kinkajous have prehensile tails and are able to turn their feet backwards, adaptations that help them move among the canopies.
Kinkajous feed on insects like termites, fruit, and small mammals. They love honey, which they slurp up with their long, narrow tongues. They are nocturnal mammals that live in noisy troops.
23. Eyelash Viper
© dreamstimeEyelash vipers are a species of pit viper. They are arboreal snakes that reach lengths of up to 33 inches and weigh a mere 0.05 pounds. These brightly colored snakes get their name from the upward pointing scales above their eyes, that look like thick eyelashes.
They are a venomous snake species, that have sharp prehensile fangs that can leave a deadly bite. It’s hard to know what color an eyelash viper will be, as they come in shades of red, yellow, brown, green, and pink, and a mix!
24. Bullet Ant
© dreamstimeBullet ants are named after their sting, which is allegedly the most painful insect sting and hurts as much as being shot! They are also known as 24-hour ants, which is how long the sharp pain can last after a sting.
These dangerous little insects are just 0.7-1.2 inches in length, but don’t underestimate them based on their size. They are black with a red undertone and have large pincers that sit on the ends of their heads, and a short, visible sting on the ends of their bodies. They feed on nectar, insect larvae and small arthropods.
25. Brazilian Wandering Spider
© dreamstimeDespite its name, this spider is found across the Amazon, it was just first discovered in Brazil. The spiders’ legs alone can grow up to seven inches long, and its eight eyes are rather alien looking. This species of spider is highly venomous and has been ranked among the most venomous spiders of the world.
They are covered in short little hairs along their entire bodies and long legs. Brazilian wandering spiders are usually brown, gray, or a light-yellow color. They are quite aggressive and bare their jaws as a warning sign. These spiders are in the genus Phoneutria, which in Greek translates to “murderess”!
26. Potoo Bird
© dreamstimePotoos are a group of birds, made up of seven different species. They are solitary birds, that hunt for insects like moths by themselves. Potoos are also nocturnal and have a well-developed sense of sight and large eyes to help them see at night.
Their plumage boasts intricate patterns in gray, brown, and black. It is thought that these patterns are designed to mimic tree bark, helping the bird camouflage into the surrounding branches and avoid predation. These clever birds spend the daytime hiding in plain sight!
27. Side-Necked Turtle
© dreamstimeThere are a few different biological families that fall under the category of side-necked turtle, all of which are named after the posture they take when they feel threatened. Instead of disappearing into their shells, they move their head and neck low down to one side.
Species like the yellow-spotted side-necked turtle live in the Amazon, in freshwater rivers and large streams. This species is one of the biggest river turtles in South America, with females growing up to 27 inches. Sadly, side-necked turtles have been heavily hunted and traded in the international pet trade, which has caused considerable declines in side-necked turtle populations in the wild.
28. Giant Monkey Frog
© dreamstimeThese large frogs are among the largest tree frogs on Earth. They have sleek, slimy skin that is lime green on top and white on their underside. Females are larger than males and grow to up to 4.7 inches long. A unique feature of the giant monkey frog is that it has specialized glands that secrete a thick, wax-like secretion they cover their bodies in, protecting them from drying out in the sun.
The secretion, dermophin, is said to be a natural painkiller, 40 times stronger than morphine! They are nocturnal amphibians that lead arboreal lives, only coming down in the wet season to mate. These large frogs can lay up to 600 eggs, that they leave in a leafy nest.
29. Mata mata
© dreamstimeMata-matas look like strange, prehistorical creatures, but they’re real and alive today! This species of turtle is easily identified by a glance at its triangular head that sits at the end of a long neck and has a short horn coming off it. Their shell is dark brown and has spike like elevations on it.
They measure up to 18 inches and live for some 15 years in the wild. They are solitary, nocturnal animals that feed at night. The mata mata’s excellent eyesight and motion sensitive skin flaps help it detect nearby fish.
30. Pink-toed Tarantulas
© dreamstimePink-toed tarantulas have hairy black bodies and are named after the small patch of pale pink skin on the end of each of their eight legs. They are a species of tree-dwelling spider, meaning they spend most of their time off the ground on trees or other vegetation. Their venomous fangs can leave a nasty bite! They can grow to lengths of five inches, but most of that is leg!
They hunt for their prey at night, and feed on invertebrates as well as small vertebrates, like lizards, mice, and frogs. Female pink-toed spiders can lay up to 200 eggs at once, that are wrapped up into a ball, called an egg sac, and guarded by the male tarantula.
31. Paradise Tanager
© dreamstimeThese exotic and brightly colored birds are about 5 inches long. The bird’s plumage is definitely eye-catching – their black feathers contrast with the bright green feathers on their faces, their blue chest and belly feathers, and the patch of red feathers on the bird’s lower back.
Paradise tanagers form small flocks of 10 to 15 individuals that move around together. They feed on fruits, small insects, berries, and sweet nectar. Locally, these birds are called the yeri yeri because of their calling sound.
32. Green Anaconda
© dreamstimeGreen anacondas are among the biggest animals in the Amazon rainforest and the longest snake species on the planet. On average they are some 20 feet long, but they can reach astonishing lengths of up to 29 feet! And that’s not all, they are also the heaviest snakes on Earth. They weigh around 550 pounds.
They spend most of their time in shallow waters, slithering along the wet mud with their heads raised above the water. You’d be right in thinking they eat fish, but these impressive snakes also feed on much larger animals like tapirs, wild pigs, and even caimans and the occasional jaguar!
33. Giant River Otter
© dreamstimeGiant river otters are the largest of the world’s 13 otter species. They reach lengths of 6 feet and weigh up to 75 pounds! They are only found in rivers and creeks along the La Plata River system in the Amazon Rainforest. Their throats have patches of white fur that stand out against their otherwise brown bodies.
Most otters are solitary, but giant otters are social and live in large families made up of monogamous parents and several generations of offspring. They hunt for fish, crustaceans, and even snakes! They’re so large they need some 6 to 9 pounds of food per day.
34. Jaguar
© dreamstimeSlender and beautiful, jaguars are one of the most dangerous land predators in the Amazon Rainforest. They have cinnamon brown fur decorated with dark brown spots, and white bellies. Whilst they are found in other parts of the world, they are most abundant in the Brazilian Amazon.
They are the third largest big cat in the world and can run as fast as 50 miles per hour! These astonishing cats also have the most powerful bite of all the big cat species, strong enough to bite through a turtle’s shell or a crocodile’s thick skin.
35. Red Howler Monkey
© dreamstimeThese bearded monkeys have dark red fur and long, 31-inch prehensile tails. Males are larger than females and measure some 28 inches and weigh around 20 pounds. Females measure up to 22 inches and weigh just 15 pounds. This difference in size across genders is known as sexual dimorphism.
Red howlers, like all the howler species, are named after their loud calling sounds that can be heard from three miles away! Males have even evolved an enlarged hyoid to make them louder. These monkeys spend most of their time up in the trees munching on leaves.
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