Peru Amazon Facts
There are many interesting and unknown facts about the Amazon baisin in Peru and on this page we aim to enlighten you on all the facts you need to know about the Amazon rainforest.
>>The Amazon River is 6280km long and is the world's second longest river. Oniv the river Nile in Africa is longer. The Amazon however, at any one point in time has the highest amount of water flowing down it. No other river even comes close. It may not be the longest, but it is the widest. From Iquitos in Peru all the way across Brazil to the Atlantic, the Amazon is between six and ten kilometres wide.
>>The Amazon produces approximately 20 percent of all the water that the world's rivers pour into the oceans on its own.
>>The first European found the amazon because he was 200 miles out to sea and noticed that he was sailing in fresh water. He turned toward shore and found the amazon river. Ships still today anchor in the outflow of the Amazon, to remove the marine life (barnacles) attached to their hulls.
>>The Amazon Rainforest covers over a billion acres, encompassing areas in Brazil, Venezuela, Colombia and the Eastern Andean region of Ecuador and Peru. If Amazonia were a country, it would be the ninth largest in the world.
>>More than half of the world's estimated 10 million species of plants, animals and insects live in the tropical rainforest with one-fifth of the world's fresh water located in the the Amazon Basin.
>>Deforestation is a major problem to the Amazon and planet Earth as the rainforests once covered 14% of the earth's land surface; now they cover a mere 6% and experts estimate that the last remaining rainforests could be consumed in less than 40 years.
>>Currently, 121 prescription drugs currently sold worldwide come from plant-derived sources. And while 25% of Western pharmaceuticals are derived from rainforest ingredients, less than 1% of these tropical trees and plants have been tested by scientists.
