The unique ecological environment of the Amazon Basin is very unfriendly to humans, the most representative of which is the Amazon rainforest located in the lower reaches of it, which has been called the "forbidden area for human beings" since its discovery, and has swallowed the lives of countless explorers and developers. In recent years, a strange phenomenon has been found in the Amazon rainforest, that is, many thousands of square meters of vegetation in the rainforest have disappeared, leaving only low shrubs, which the locals call "Devil's Garden". How terrifying is the Amazon rainforest? Next, we will reveal its unusualness.
The mysterious Legend of the Devil's Garden
The Amazon rainforest covers an area of 7 million square kilometres and spans nine countries, almost the size of Australia. Due to its proximity to the equator and the freshwater irrigation provided by the ice and snow of the Andes Mountains, it has a unique rainforest climate. It is hot and humid all year round, with an average daytime temperature of 33 °C and a night temperature of 23 °C, while enjoying rich freshwater resources, providing a good living environment for all kinds of animals and plants. The unique environment and large area make it impossible for scientists to accurately count the number of species living in it, and it is roughly estimated that millions of species including plants, birds, reptiles, insects, etc. live in the rainforest.
The forest is full of lush vegetation, but occasionally there are some "devil's gardens", which are very bare and do not conform to the surrounding environment, making people talk about discoloration.
As the first explorers walked through the Amazon rainforest, they suddenly found a clearing ahead where the sun could shine in, where the trees that covered the sky had disappeared, and only low shrubs could be seen. The entire area was circular, the ground was exposed to the sun, and there was not even a single weed, which made the explorers very strange. The local guide was even more horrified when he saw it, and refused to go near the area anyway, and kept shouting the name "Devil's Garden".
Originally, the locals called the area where all such plants mysteriously disappeared as the "Devil's Garden", believing that there were devils doing evil here, and once people walked into the Devil's Garden, they would be disoriented, guided around in circles by the devils inside, and stay inside like "ghosts hitting the wall" for life. This devil is the Amazon legendary "Chuya Chakui".
The legend of Chua Chakyu
Because of Peru's tropical rainforest climate and being in the hinterland of South America, many mysteries and myths and legends have been born in the development of civilization.
According to Peruvian legend, in the mysterious Amazon rainforest, there is a lame dwarf named Chua Chaqui. It has a human foot on one leg and a sheep's hoof on the other, and it looks very ugly, but it has a magic that can change its own image, and can transform into any person it wants to become.
The Devil's Garden is Chua Chakkui's home, which builds and maintains the area and cleans up excess vegetation. Whenever a pedestrian approaches, they will become their friends and relatives, inducing them to go around in circles and finally lose their way completely.
Of course, this is a superstitious statement, and scientists have always wanted to use science to explain this phenomenon.
"Lemon ants" and their homes
The peculiarity of devil's garden attracted the interest of a scholar named Megan Elizabeth Fredrickson. She was studying biology at Stanford University and had a solid foundation in the ecology of the Amazon rainforest. After entering the Devil's Garden, she immediately investigated the remaining shrubs and found that these trees had one thing in common, that is, there was a special ant growing on the trunk. These ants were used as protein supplements when explorers were in short food and tasted much like lemon, earning them the nickname "lemon ants".
Megan and the research team conducted an experiment in which some trees were protected in a forest to remove ants, while others migrated lemon ants. After just 5 days, the unprotected trees began to die, while the protected ones were unharmed. Of course, one of the unprotected trees is not unusual, and that is the only surviving tree in the aforementioned Devil's Garden.
Further studies have shown that lemon ants inject the secretion of formic acid from their mouths into leaves that they do not like trees, which acts similarly to herbicides and can easily cause leaves to wither in a short period of time. And those trees that are loved by lemon ants, in addition to providing a place for lemon ants to live, can also produce other pleasant substances, thus establishing a symbiotic state between the two.
So why did the Devil's Garden expand infinitely until it ruled the entire rainforest? This starts with the magical ecological environment of the Amazon rainforest.
Insects are an important part of the food chain
The Amazon rainforest is home to 2.5-5 million species of insects, including both herbivorous and carnivorous. Insects are the main source of protein in nature, and also the highest proportion of animals, taking ants as an example, the total weight of these small insects accounts for more than 10% of the total weight of animals on earth!
Most of the animals in the Amazon rainforest eat insects and eventually be eaten by insects. The lemon ant does not feed on plants, but is an omnivore. They choose animal carcasses, metabolites, and plant secretions as their main food source. Due to the creation of the Devil's Garden, animals that depend on the original vegetation will migrate, resulting in the increasing difficulty of lemon ants collecting food, resulting in a slowdown in the growth of the Devil's Garden.
At the same time, insects that feed on the "lemon tree" that lemon ants prefer will approach the Devil's Garden because of the ease of eating. In the delicate balance of growing and changing devil's garden and constantly being eaten, nature magically restricts the "devil's" footsteps.
However, the magical Amazon rainforest continues to disappear under the devastation of human beings, and perhaps in a few hundred years this green will be erased from the earth forever.
Disappearing rainforest
The area where the Amazon rainforest is located is relatively backward in economic development, and the rainforest protection capacity is weak, and it has reached the brink of crisis. In Peru, for example, the country's economy grew rapidly in 2021, reaching 13.5 percent, but it was only 46th in the world GDP rankings. Under the economic structure dominated by agriculture and minerals, rainforest resources have naturally become an important means of increasing income.
First and foremost is the reclamation of farmland. The Amazon rainforest, which occupies 60 percent of Brazil's territory, has exposed its food problem after 120 years of positive population growth. In Brazil's history, the burning of rainforests in exchange for fertile land has never stopped, even in 2004, when the Brazilian Rainforest Law was revised under pressure from international environmental organizations, the brazilian rainforest area is still shrinking, and reports show that the rainforest in Brazil is disappearing at a rate of 6 football fields every day.
The same thing is happening in other countries, and we'll take Peru as an example. According to incomplete statistics, Peru lost more than 16,500 square kilometers of rainforest in the short 13 years from 2001 to 2014 due to agricultural reclamation and mineral exploitation. The 2019 Amazon rainforest fires were caused by burning rainforests to reclaim farmland, and were once pushed to the core of public opinion worldwide. In the face of condemnation from various countries, Peru's official answer is poignant, the food problems and economic development needs brought about by population growth, and the burning of rainforests is the only way for locals to survive.
The Amazon rainforest is home to 20% of the world's total green plants, releasing one-third of the world's total oxygen every year, known as the "lungs of the earth". At the same time, it has countless rare animals and plants, and occupies an unparalleled role in the world biosphere. Nature may not have created this rainforest to allow humans to survive in it, but it has always provided for human beings in other ways.
Author: Old Dream Tales Preliminary Review: Ding Bao'er School Manuscript Editor: W