The tropical rainforest provides nearly optimal conditions for life. Year-round warmth, lots of precipitation, lots of sunlight: all the things that make life possible are here in spades.

In fact, the largest problem for life in the rainforest is caused by this: too much of a good thing. The taller trees spread out to take optimal use of the sun, smothering everything beneath it. Beneath this canopy of leaves, the rainforest is a dark place, filled with life specially adapted to take advantage of the low light conditions found there.

There are three broad layers of life in the rainforest, each of which has its own distinct species and lifeforms.

The canopy consists of the tops of the taller trees. This is typically about 60-90 feet in the air. There are taller trees than this, but these trees have to contend with hot winds drying them out (some of these trees actually have species of cacti growing upon them, and many of them are deciduous). This layer of the forest gets plenty of sunlight. They flourish so much that they block much light from going below.

The understory is the layer directly beneath the canopy. Most of the moisture that falls through the canopy is intercepted by the plants in this region. The vegetation is dense, there is little air flow, and very high humidity.

The jungle floor is very dark, and gets little rain, most of it having been intercepted by plants above it. Little plant life (some mosses and fungi, mostly) live here.

There are many sources of water in a rainforest.

Springs and rivers abound, carrying the runoff from the frequent rains.

A plant called a 'water vine' holds water within itself. If you cut sections of the vine off, good drinking water will pour out.

Rainwater collects in the large leaves of jungle plants.

Food is easily available in the jungle, if you know how to find it.

There is a proliferation of animal life to eat. Monkeys are plentiful and tasty. Paca (a large rodent) tastes like roast beef. Aligators, piranah, and snakes are also tasty.

Edible tubers such as potatoes, yuca, and boniato are quite tasty and plentiful, but so are poisonous tubers. A Wilderness Lore(11) check is required to tell the difference).

Often small caves can be found, but they are most often occupied.

Shelters made of available plants can be quite servicable to fend off the elements and the fauna (an in some cases, the flora). Palm fronds make good thatched roofs, and horrible thorny plants can be heaped up in a circle to ward off some of the larger predators.

Stay away from most insects in the jungle. The manchacha emits a foul spray. Many of them spread disease (see below).

Garlic applied to the skin repels many insects and snakes.

The abundance of life in the jungle breeds an abundance of disease. Many insect bites may be diseased, water may be poison, and many plants and animals may, in fact, not be good to eat.

Fortunately, the rainforest also provides many of the remedies for its own illnesses. Many jungle herbs and plants are actually medicines and antidotes for illnesses.

Most common illnesses (nausea, infections, etc) have ready cures in the jungle. A Wilderness Lore (10) check will provide enough antidote for a single instance.

Less common illnesses (malaria, various plagues, etc) also have cures readily available, if you know where to look. A Wilderness Lore (20) check can reveal cures for many of these.

Cures thus found in the jungle generally give a +5 Circumstance bonus to Heal checks for the illness.

Some example cures:

stomach problems: cured by sap from a rubber tree.

infected cuts: treated by resin from the iodine tree.

malaria: prevented by brewing the bark of a Quinine tree into a tea.

Where there are medicines, there are also poisons. A Wilderness Lore (15) check will provide enough poison to inflict a single dose upon some unsuspecting victim. The nature of the poison thus discovered is up to the GM.

Tropical rainforests have extremely large amounts of rainfall throughout the year. Yearly precipitation is typically more than 200cm (that's over 2 meters). Some rainforests can have 4 meters of rain per year.

Typically, torrential downpours are followed by the clouds clearing and the sun shining. In some jungles, the rains fall at certain, predictable times of day.

Also, it's extremely hot year-round. With perhaps a difference of 5 degrees centigrade between the summer and winter, it often is up around 20C at any time of year.

Despite the enormous heat, nights can get quite cold in some jungles. Cold enough to need woolen blankets or thick clothes.

The rainforest has a surprising diversity of life: a single square kilometer may contain as many as 100 different tree species.

Trees are 25-35 m tall, with buttressed trunks and shallow roots, mostly evergreen, with large dark green leaves. Many trees have fruit, and most have thin, smooth bark.

The floor of the jungle receives little light, and so is mostly home to sparse vegetation, mosses, lichens, and fungi.

Poisonous plants

• Bael fruit: a 10' tree which produces a sour citrus fruit

• Bamboo: woody grasses, can grow immensely tall extremely quickly, the small shoots of which are edible.

• Banana or plantain: treelike plant with several large leaves on top, and long fruit that grows in bunches. The flowers, heart,

• Bignay: small tree, with a small edible red fruit, about a half an inch in diameter. The rest of the tree is poisonous.

• Breadfruit: a tall tree with large leaves, the breadfruit produces foot-diameter green spherical fruit. The fruit is edible raw, and can be dried and ground into flour. The seeds are edible cooked.

• Coconut palm: a tall skinny tree with a large bunch of huge leaves at the very top. The coconuts grow in bunches at the top. The coconuts produce milk, that is vitamin and sugar rich. The nut's meat is oily and nutritous. The shell of the coconut is also useful for making things, and the oil of the nut meat can protect metal from corrosion. Many other properties, too numerous to mention here.

• Fishtail palm: a huge palm tree with odd leaves. The trunk holds starch that is good to eat, the sap is a good source of sugar, and the palm cabbage can be eaten raw or cooked.

• Horseradish tree: a tall fernlike tree. Most parts of the tree are edible. The roots, when ground, are much like horseradish. The flowers, leaves, and young seedpods are tasty raw or cooked. The seedpods can be boiled to produce oil.

• Lotus: a water plant with large leaves and pink or yellow flowers. All parts of the plant are edible cooked or raw.

• Mango:

• Manioc

• Nipa palm

• Papaya

• Persimmon

• Rattan palm

• Sago palm

• Sterculia

• Sugarcane

• Sugar palm

• Sweetsop

• Taro

• Water lily

• Wild fig

• Wild rice

• Yam

• Jungle trees (see above for description)

• Ferns

• Mosses

• Orchids

• Fungi

• Lichen

• Vines (grow on the trees to leech moisture and light from higher elevations.

• Palms

• Yams (creeper)

• Sweet potato (creeper)

• Treetop cacti

Insects are a real problem in the jungle. Mosquitoes carrying malaria are out at dawn and dusk, and clothes covering the entire body, some sort of insect repellent, and/or netting is advised.

Ants can be a problem for people who are unable to move. Unconsious wounded should not be left unattended.

Leeches.

• Insects: mosquitoes, spiders, wasps, bees, leeches, butterflies (emperor butterfly - blue)

• Birds: raptors, hummingbirds, tanagers, honeycreepers, Trinidad piping guan

• Snakes

• Crocodiles and Caymans

• Mammals: red brocket deer, manicou, bats, squirrels, wild pigs, agouti, armadiollos, monkeys

• tigers

• buffalo

• water buffalo (sometimes tamed)

• elephant (sometimes tamed)

• ocelot

• lion

• panther

• gorilla

Many thanks to Jeff Randall and his webpage at http://www.jungletraining.com/jungle2.htm for his valuable information about Jungle survival. This is a fun page about real life jungle survival from which much of the information on this page came from.

Another excellent site about survival is http://www.survivaliq.com/

Some of the information presented here is specific to a particular rain forest: Paria Springs, situated 7 miles from Venezuela

Some further web resources consulted for this section are here, here and here.