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Heights of diversity

Rich jungle habitats reflect the warmth and wetness at the equator.

David Attenborough climbs high into the rainforest canopy. Rainforest is home to the greatest proliferation, bulk and diversity of life anywhere on earth. This is thanks to the abundant equatorial rains and the warmth of the tropical sun which has allowed the jungle to stretch right around the Earth. In South America, the jungle forms a band six hundred miles either side of the equator, where there is probably more unexplored territory than anywhere else in the world. Following the Amazon to the east one gets to the Atlantic. Cross the Atlantic and you reach the west coast of Africa with another giant river, the Zaire, and another vast tract of jungle. The eastern side of Africa does not get so much rain so the jungle dwindles there and becomes savannah, but it reappears on the other side of the Indian Ocean. It spans India, Sri Lanka, Burma, Malaysia, Thailand, Borneo, Sulawesi, Indonesia, and New Guinea. After the Pacific you are then back at the biggest of all rainforests - the Amazon.

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