About one out of every ten kinds of animal known to science lives in the Amazon. That includes jaguars, sloths, capybaras, toucans, giant otters, pink river dolphins, and millions of insects so small you would need a magnifying glass to see them. New species are discovered there almost every week.
Running through the middle of the forest is the Amazon River. It carries more water than the next ten biggest rivers in the world put together. In some places it is so wide that you cannot see the other bank - it looks more like a sea.
The trees of the Amazon do something amazing for the whole planet. They breathe in carbon dioxide (the gas cars and factories let out) and breathe out oxygen (the gas we need to live). Scientists sometimes call the Amazon 'the lungs of the Earth'.
Around a million Indigenous people live in the Amazon, in more than 400 different communities. Some of them have lived there for thousands of years and know which leaves are food, which are medicine, and how to walk through the forest without getting lost.