Amazon Rainforest Tours and Travel | Fish Species of the Amazon River
Though when passengers daydream about their upcoming Amazon tours, they probably think mostly about what they will find in the rainforest, visitors can also look forward to an endless array of astonishing sights in the river itself. Some 3,000 species of fish are known to inhabit the waters of the Amazon, making it the world's most bio-diverse river. While most species are small, the Amazon is also home to some of the world's largest fish. Two hundred species of characin and catfish alone live in the Amazon River.
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Visitors on Amazon tours will recognize many of the popular aquarium fish that inhabit the river such as the angel fish and the neon tetra that are found in the river's blackwater tributaries of the Amazon. One such fish, the arawana, or monkey fish, feeds from the surface and can leap six feet out of the water to catch its prey. Relatives of much larger species, these tiny aquarium novelties may have evolved to their small stature as a result of varying food availability due to flooding.
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One of the world's largest freshwater fish, the piraruca (arapaima gigas), weighs over 300 pounds and grows to up to ten feet in length, subsisting on a diet of other fish and birds.
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The giant Piramutaba migrates over 2,000 miles. Several species have evolved to become fruit and seed eaters, including the tambaqui, arapaima and the dourada. Among other species, the tambaqui feeds in the higher-nutrient whitewater tributaries while young and moves to the blackwaters after it matures where its mainstay fruits are found.
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Electric eels as long as six feet are also common. The Amazon is home to one of the few remaining lungfish, the Lepidosiren paradoxa. An eel-like species, it is so named because it gulps air.
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Of the over twenty species of piranha that inhabit the Amazon, most are not the fearsome man-eaters of legend and do not swim in schools unless forced to by dry conditions. One exception is the caju, an encounter with which is best avoided by both livestock and humans.
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As a result of the river changing course during pre-historic times, have adapted to a freshwater environment over the millennia, among them sting rays, allowing them to live in the Amazon. Twenty species of fresh water sting rays are found in the shallow waters of Amazon tributaries. Colorful and well-camouflaged, the carnivorous Amazon stingrays are small, up to ten inches but nonetheless feared. While they do not sting humans, it is easy to step on one buried in the sand and experience the psin of its poisonous spine.
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Read about the birds and rainforest animals and the river animals one is likely to encounter on Amazon tours in our articles devoted to these subjects.
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