or huntingpurposes. It's poison is now being tested for use in modern medicine. In a single raiforest habitat, several species of squirels can live together withoutharming one another. Why can nine species of squirrels live together? Well, in a briefsummary each of the nine species is a different size; three have specialized diets orhabitats, which leaves six species that feed on nuts, fruits and insects, and so potentiallycompete for food. A closer look showed that three of the six, a large, a medium, and asmall one live in the forest canopy and never come to the ground. The largest squirrelfeeds mainly on very large, hard nuts, and the smaller ones eat smaller fruits and nuts. Theother three species, again a large medium and small one live in the ground and eat fruitsand nuts of the same species as their canopy neighbors, but only after they fall to theground.Tropical rainforests are bursting with life. Not only do millions of species of plantsand animals live in rainforests, but many people also call the rainforest their home. In fact,Indigenous, or native, people have lived in rainforests for thousands of years. In North andSouth America they were mistakenly named Indians by Christopher Columbus, whothought that he had landed in Indonesia, then called the East Indies. The native people ofthe rainforest live very different lives than us. In this section, I will explain how verydifferent our lives differ than from the indigenous people of the rainforest. Although manyindigenous people live very much like we do, some still live as their ancestors did manyyears before them. These groups organize their daily lives differently than our culture. Everything they need to survive, from food to medicines to clothing, comes from theforest: FOODBesides haunting, gathering wild fruits and nuts and fishing, Indigenous peoplealso plant small gardens for other sources of food, using a sustainable farming methodcalled shifting cultivating. First they...
