The Exotic Wildlife You Can See While Visiting Brazil’s Amazon Rainforest

A visit to the Amazon Rainforest is a nature-lover's trip of a lifetime. Home to a huge variety of wildlife, this incredible vast stretch of jungle offers the largest and most diverse cluster of animals and plants in the world. Here are some of the incredible animals you can finding living in this natural paradise.

Poison Dart Frogs

One of the most toxic species on earth, the poison dart frogs are unique for their incredible bright-colored skin. With over 170 different species, all shades of the rainbow, these tiny leaf-hopping amphibians can be found all over the rain forest, however some species are quite rare. The beautiful blue poison dart frog can be found in the far north of Brazil's Amazon and stretching into Suriname.

Scarlet Macaw

Often remarked as the most beautiful bird in the world, this vibrantly colored macaw is one of the most iconic animals of the Americas. Common all over the Amazon Basin, along with various regions of Central America, they're easily spotted by both their beautiful plumage and loud, high-pitched squawks.

Pygmy Marmoset

This cute little monkey is one of the smallest primates in the world, usually growing not much bigger than a human hand. The midget monkey is home to the western part of the Amazon Basin in Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia, where they're quite common and easily seen in the wild.

Amazon Pink River Dolphin

Surprisingly the vast Amazon River is also home to to a unique species of pink dolphin that inhabits much of the waterway around the rain forest. Although they're often referred to as pink dolphins, most of the dolphins are more of a grey color, with the males more frequently having a pink hue to them.

Golden Lion Tamarin

Distinctive for its beautiful golden fur, this endangered species has lost much of its habitat, now mainly confined to a few coastal rain forest areas in the South-east of Brazil. Conservation efforts have been quite successful in recent years however and numbers have been estimated to have grown over six times.

Hoatzin

Common over most of the Amazon, this incredibly unique bird is one of a kind, believed to be the last surviving type of bird that stems from the catastrophic event that killed the dinosaurs 64 millions years ago. It's also called the reptile-bird due to the young having claws on their wings that can be used to climb around the canopy.

Jaguar

The symbolic animal of South America, this majestic predator is found throughout the Amazon region. While their population and numbers are high in the rain forest, it can be quite rare to spot one there in the wild due to the dense vegetation and difficulty in tracking them. If you really want to see a jaguar and don't want to put it down to chance then consider spending some time in Brazil's Pantanal wetland region. They're just as common there and are much easier to spot due to the open environment allowing people to see them from afar. A number of companies and guides offer jaguar safaris with a high chance of seeing the beautiful spotted beast.

Conclusion

Whether you're lucky or not in animal sightings while visiting the Amazon, you'll still be rewarded with an incredible amount of exotic wildlife that inhabit this diverse area of the world. Traversing this vast natural paradise is almost like discovering a different world as you walk among towering jungle canopies teeming with all kinds of creatures.