Lost... In the Jungle of Doom Read online

  If you decide not to bother, click here.

  If you decide to try fishing, click here.

  You carry on walking, still hot and sweaty, and, you notice, covered in insect bites. There are mosquitos and other biting flies that bite during the day and at night. You hope none of them has given you a disease.

  A dip would have been refreshing, but maybe a river is a better bet, and there must be one not far away – after all, this is the Amazon! It isn’t long before you hear the sound of trickling water and find a stream. You follow it downstream and hope that eventually, it will lead to a river.

  Click here.

  You collect some water from the river in your salvaged metal container and set about making a fire. Once the water’s been boiling for a few minutes, you reckon it’ll be safe to drink. You leave it to cool for a bit, then drink thirstily.

  You feel better, but you’re still very hot and sweaty. A quick dip in the river is tempting – but what creatures might be lurking in there?

  If you decide not to swim, click here.

  If you decide to swim, click here.

  Click here for tips on how to make a fire.

  Making a Fire

  Boiling water will kill most disease-causing bacteria. Here are some tips for making a fire in the rainforest.

  • You need something that will make a spark. If you don’t have matches, focus sunlight through a lens – a glass bottle, a magnifying glass, a pair of glasses – to make a bright spot of light on your tinder (see below). Blow on it very gently as it starts to glow.

  • The forest floor will be damp, so arrange some stones to build your fire on. Make sure they’re not really wet (for example, stones from a stream), because wet stones can explode in a fire!

  • You need tinder to start your fire. This is very dry material that catches fire easily. In the rainforest, it’s hard to find. Try fine wood shavings, cotton wool, bark, or the insides of birds’ nests. You might need to leave your tinder in the sunshine to dry out completely. Good tinder needs only a spark to make it catch light.

  • Around your tinder, arrange a pyramid of kindling – small, dry twigs. If the outside of the twig is damp, cut it back until you reach dry wood.

  • Once your kindling is burning well, add small pieces of dry wood. When the fire is hotter, you can use wood that’s a bit damp. It’ll be smoky, but that should keep biting insects away.

  Click here to return to your adventure.

  Your wound throbs as you walk, so you take it slowly. It’s not bleeding any more. You only hope it isn’t infected.

  A squawk makes you jump, and you look up to see a parrot, high up in the trees. You stop to watch the beautiful red and blue bird as it swoops away. As you follow its direction, you realise you were right earlier on – it does look brighter that way. You carry on, feeling optimistic.

  Click here.

  You’ve taken a chance . . . and luckily the fruit is papaya, as you’d thought, and it’s safe to eat. You feel much better after eating the ripe, juicy flesh and the peppery-tasting seeds. You’ve been lucky this time, but it’s not a good idea to eat anything in the rainforest unless you are 100% sure of what it is.

  Although it’s not as good as actually drinking clean water, the juicy fruit will help to keep you hydrated too. With this in mind, you consider picking some more fruit to take with you. It might be heavy and awkward to carry, though, and the jungle seems to be full of edible plants. Then again, you can see some fruit that’s within reach around the other side of the tree.

  If you decide to continue your journey without picking any fruit, click here.

  If you decide to pick some more fruit, click here.

  You take off your clothes, wash them in the river, and leave them hanging on a branch to dry. You then wade into the water. It feels wonderful on your hot, clammy skin as you swim out, not far from the shore.

  Lots of people regularly swim in the Amazon. But you’re very unlucky, because you accidentally wake up an enormous black caiman, which is sleeping on the river bed. These animals usually hunt at night, but this one is hungry and loses no time in drowning and then eating an easy meal – you.

  The end.

  Click here to return to the beginning and try again.

  Click here to find out more about different Amazon River creatures.

  Amazon River Creatures

  As well as the black caiman that’s just had you for breakfast, the rivers and swamps of the Amazon are home to many types of fish and mammals . . .

  • The world’s largest freshwater fish, the pirarucu, lives in the Amazon. It’s enormous – around three metres long – and is unusual because it breathes air. Pirarucus have teeth on their tongues and the roof of their mouths and feed on other fish.

  • You’re more likely to meet a spectacled caiman than a potentially dangerous black caiman. They are more common, lighter in colour and smaller. They could still give you a nasty bite if you trod on one by accident, though.

  • Pink river dolphins are freshwater mammals that live in the Amazon and Orinoco river systems, feeding on fish and crabs. They have long, thin snouts and are pale pink in colour. Males can be up to 2.5 metres long.

  • The mata mata turtle is one of the strangest looking animals of the Amazon! It has a flat, triangular head covered in bumps and flaps of skin, and a long, thin snout. It’s well camouflaged and looks a bit like tree bark or a clump of fallen leaves. It lies in wait to ambush fish and other small creatures.

  • The largest aquatic mammal of the Amazon is the huge manatee.

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  You try not to panic as you think about how to find water to wash your wound. There must be a stream not far away. You blunder off in search of one, bleeding heavily and dragging your wounded leg.

  Eventually you do find a fast-running stream, and the water does seem clean enough. But by this time you’ve lost a lot of blood. As you approach the stream, you realise you’re too weak to wash your wound. You slump down on the forest floor and pass out, never to regain consciousness.

  The end.

  Click here to return to the beginning and try again.

  Click here to find out tips about first aid.

  Health and First Aid

  • If you’re injured and the wound is bleeding a lot, the most important thing is to stop the bleeding. An average adult has about 6.25 litres of blood. Losing a half to a litre of blood will make an adult feel faint, losing about 2.25 litres can cause death.

  • To stop a wound from bleeding, apply pressure with a bandage, or whatever material you have. But be careful not to tie it too tightly, or you could cut off the blood flow to the wound and end up doing more damage.

  • Open wounds are at serious risk of infection in the rainforest’s damp, warm conditions, where there are lots of biting insects and bacteria breeds quickly. So it’s important to keep wounds clean.

  • Even if you’re not wounded, keeping clean is vital in the jungle. For example, potentially fatal Chagas disease is transmitted by a blood-sucking insect that often poos next to where it’s punctured the skin. If you scratch the wound without cleaning it first, and the creature’s poo gets into it, you’ll become infected with the disease.

  Click here to return to your adventure.

  Your stomach growls as you trudge onwards, but you ignore it. You know that you can survive a long time without eating and you decide it’s not worth the risks just to stop a rumbling stomach.

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  You’re feeling refreshed after eating the fruit, but your feet hurt as you walk. Soon they become so painful that you have to stop. You sit on a log and take off your shoes and socks. The bottoms of your feet are white and wrinkled, and painful to touch.

  If you decide to stop and rest and try to heal your feet, click here.

  If you decide to walk through the pain and find help as quickly as possible, click here.

  You walk along the trail, keeping an eye
out for signs that humans might have come this way. You don’t see any, but after a while you sense something else. A terrible smell, like rotting rubbish, with a hint of burnt rubber. The smell gets worse as you hear a rumbling noise, and barking. Maybe it’s people with their hunting dogs, you think, hopefully . . . Suddenly there are what seems like hundreds of hairy pig-like animals hurtling towards you. Your wound makes it difficult for you to get out of the way of the creatures quickly enough, and, to make matters worse, you stagger and fall against one of the babies, which squeals! Barking and chattering their huge, tusk-like teeth, two of the animals attack you!

  The animals’ tusks are sharp and they attack viciously. Already wounded and weak, by the time the animals have gone you have lost a lot of blood. You sink to the forest floor, bleeding copiously.

  The end.

  Click here to return to the beginning and try again.

  Click here to learn more about white-lipped peccaries.

  White-lipped Peccaries

  The herd of animals you encountered were white-lipped peccaries . . .

  • Found throughout most of Central and South America, peccaries look like pigs, with long snouts for rooting, but in fact they’re not related to pigs.

  • White-lipped peccaries are dark brown or black, covered in bristly hairs. They grow up to about 1.3 metres long and weigh up to 40 kilograms.

  • They live in herds of at least twenty animals, but can number several hundred! They make barking sounds, and when they’re threatened they chatter their teeth.

  • They give off a disgusting smell, similar to the smell of a skunk, which comes from scent glands on their backs. The smell helps the herd members identify one another.

  • White-lipped peccaries are the biggest and most aggressive peccary species. They often attack and kill dogs, but they’re very rarely dangerous to humans.

  Click here to return to your adventure.

  In your eagerness to collect the fruit from the tree, you’ve forgotten to check the ground. You’re not the only one attracted by the fruit! So are various different small mammals. And attracted to the small creatures are . . . snakes!

  The one you’ve just walked into is well camouflaged on the forest floor and is highly venomous – a bushmaster. Alarmed, it strikes at your leg, delivering a lethal dose of venom.

  The end.

  Click here to return to the beginning and try again.

  Click here to find out more about bushmaster snakes.

  Bushmaster Snake

  • One of the world’s most venomous snakes, bushmasters, are found in Central and South America, especially in the Amazon rainforest.

  • Bushmasters are a type of pit viper. These are snakes that have heat-sensitive pits on their heads, which they use to detect their small animal prey.

  • They’re the longest venomous snake in the Americas and can grow up to three metres long, though on average they’re less than two metres.

  • Bushmasters are reddish brown in colour, with an irregular diamond-shaped pattern along their thick bodies. This means they’re well camouflaged on the rainforest floor.

  • The snakes are rarely seen, partly because of their camouflage and partly because they are usually nocturnal.

  • Bushmasters can be aggressive, especially if they’re startled. They have been known to bite and kill people.

  Click here to return to your adventure.

  You rip a strip of cloth from your shirt and gingerly apply it to the wound, tying it in place firmly but not too tightly. Your makeshift bandage provides enough pressure to stop the bleeding. You rest for a while, then cautiously stand up and move. The wound is painful, but at least it’s not pouring with blood. There’s even more reason for you to find help now, so despite the pain you carry on.

  There’s a well-worn trail ahead of you – possibly made by animals, but you hope it might be made by people. Alternatively you could meander through the trees. You’re not sure which route to take, but as you look through the trees in the opposite direction from the trail, it looks a little brighter. Maybe there’s a river that way.

  If you decide to walk through the trees, click here.

  If you decide to take the trail, click here.

  As you pass a hollow tree, you hear a buzzing sound. There are a few bees near the tree and as you take a closer look you can see that bees have made their home inside the hollow trunk. You know that honey is one of the most nutritious, easily digestable, energy-giving foods you could possibly find. And honeycomb will keep for ages, too. It might be worth a few stings to get to the precious honey and, if it proves too difficult, you can always walk away again. After all, you know you’re not allergic to bee stings.

  If you decide to try and take some honey from the bee hive, click here.

  If you decide not to risk getting stung, click here.

  The water does feel good as you step into it. But very quickly, it begins to feel very, very bad. . .

  You feel a sharp, tearing pain in your leg and cry out, then another – something is biting you! You lunge for the side of the pool and scramble out, shaking. There are two very nasty bites on your leg, and you can see that whole chunks of flesh are missing! You’ve been bitten by hungry red-bellied piranha fish, which must have been trapped in the pool during a flood and become stranded there.

  You feel sick as you look down at your bleeding wounds and try to decide what to do. You’re bleeding heavily. What should you do for the best? You could make a bandage from your clothing – but your clothes are very far from being sterile, and you might end up causing a fatal infection. Or you could try and find some clean water to wash the wounds.

  If you decide to go in search of clean water, click here.

  If you decide to apply a bandage, click here.

  Click here to find out more about piranha fish.

  Piranha Fish

  • Piranha fish are found in lakes and rivers in South America, and are quite common.

  • There are lots of different types. Some are even vegetarian! The most ferocious is the meat-eating red-bellied piranha, which weighs up to 3.5 kilograms, measures up to 33 centimetres, and has the strongest jaws.

  • Piranhas’ teeth are razor sharp, and to keep them that way the teeth are replaced throughout the fishes’ lives.

  • Red-bellied piranhas prey on fish, worms and other small animals.

  • Usually, they leave large animals alone, though they sometimes bite, and can be very dangerous if they’ve become trapped in a pool left by flooding.

  • The terrifying reputation of piranha fish is partly due to US President Theodore Roosevelt, who wrote a book about his travels, in which he described piranhas as ‘the embodiment of evil ferocity’ and claimed they would eat cattle alive if they stepped into the water. They aren’t quite as bad as that, though they are responsible for taking the odd chunk out of people, and a few missing fingers and toes.

  Click here to return to your adventure.

  You find a stick about twice the length of your arm and a vine with long, sharp thorns. Carefully, you break off some of the thorns and tie them to the stick, using the vine as string. You now have a spear with several sharp tips.

  You lie on the bank, peering into the slow-moving, murky water with the spear in your hand, ready to strike. You make out a dark shape and stab down with your spear – you’ve caught a fish! It’s not very big, but it’s a good start. You make a fire cook the fish and eat it. It’s delicious. Should you stay and catch more fish, or move on?

  If you decide to stay and catch another fish, click here.

  If you decide to move on, click here.

  Click here to find out tips on fishing in the Amazon.

  Fishing in the Amazon

  • Kneel or sit down to fish, to hide yourself from the fish, making sure not to let your shadow fall on the surface of the water.

  • If you’re experienced at fishing with a hook and line you should try it (make hooks from thorns and use liana
for your line).

  • If you’ve not tried angling before weight one end of a length of liana and tie the other end firmly to the bank. Bait thorns with worms and attach them to the liana at intervals. Drop the weighted end into the water and leave it for a while – maybe overnight – before bringing in the line, hopefully with fish attached.

  • Make a trap that fish can swim into but can’t easily get out of. For example, use a plastic bottle with the top section cut off, turned around and placed back inside the bottle so that the bottle top is facing inwards into the bottom of the bottle.

  • ‘Tickling’ fish takes a lot of practice: put your hand into the water under the bank and wait. When you feel a fish, gently move your fingers along its belly, then grab it and pull it out quickly.

  • Spear a fish using a stick with sharp thorns attached.

  • Never eat dead fish you find floating on the surface of the water as they could be diseased or rotten.