48 Fun Facts About Tropical

At roughly what latitude do the two tropics lie?

Both tropics lie at about 23.4 degrees of latitude, matching the tilt of Earth's axis; the Sun is directly overhead at each tropic on one solstice a year.

About what share of Earth's surface area lies within the tropics?

About 40% of Earth's surface lies between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn, an area once called the torrid zone; it holds about 36% of the planet's land.

Which country holds about 60% of the Amazon rainforest?

Brazil holds 60%, followed by Peru with 13% and Colombia with 10%; the forest holds an estimated 390 billion trees of some 16,000 species.

The Amazon River holds which world record?

Whether it or the Nile is the longest river remains disputed.

Estimates say what share of all species live in rainforests?

40% to 75% of all species are thought to be native to rainforests; millions of rainforest insects, plants and microbes are thought to be still undiscovered.

The Great Barrier Reef, in the Coral Sea, lies off the coast of which Australian state?

Queensland's coast is separated from the reef by a channel up to 160 km wide; with 2,900 reefs and 900 islands it is the biggest single structure made by living organisms.

Coral bleaching happens when corals lose what?

Stress from warmer water, light or salinity makes them expel the algae and pigments that give them colour.

Clownfish live in size-based dominance hierarchies within their sea anemones; which individual ranks at the top?

The breeding female ranks at the top, followed by the breeding male and then the largest non-breeder; clownfish shelter in sea anemones and, in return, protect and clean them.

A tropical cyclone in the northwestern Pacific is called what?

A typhoon is the same storm that is called a hurricane in the Atlantic or northeastern Pacific; around 80 to 90 named ones form each year worldwide.

Sailors call the windless zone near the equator where the trade winds meet what?

The doldrums is the sailors' name for the calm, squally belt where the trade winds of both hemispheres converge; meteorologists call it the Intertropical Convergence Zone.

In the Northern Hemisphere tropics, the trade winds blow mainly from which direction?

The northeast trades blow from the northeast because the Coriolis effect deflects air moving toward the equator to the right; south of the equator they arrive from the southeast.

Which naturalist studied the endemic species of the Galápagos Islands, about 900 km west of South America, in the 1830s?

Charles Darwin's study of the islands' endemic species inspired his theory of evolution by natural selection; the volcanic archipelago lies about 900 km west of mainland South America.

Which chain of 26 atolls is Earth's lowest-lying country, averaging about 1.5 metres in elevation?

The Maldives, a chain of 26 atolls in the Indian Ocean, is the world's lowest-lying country; its highest natural point is just 2.4 metres above the sea.

Borneo, the world's third-largest island, is divided among how many countries?

Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei share it; the Indonesian part is called Kalimantan.

Angel Falls, the world's tallest uninterrupted waterfall at 979 metres, is in which country?

Angel Falls is in Venezuela, dropping off the Auyán-tepui in Canaima National Park; it is named after US aviator Jimmie Angel, who flew over it in 1933.

Kilimanjaro, the highest mountain in Africa, sits just south of the equator in which country?

Kilimanjaro rises in northern Tanzania near the Kenyan border; a dormant volcano, it is the highest free-standing mountain in the world at 5,895 metres.

Singapore lies roughly how far north of the equator?

About one degree of latitude, or roughly 137 km, separates Singapore from the equator.

Bali is unusual within Indonesia for being the only province with a majority of which religion?

About 86% of Balinese follow Balinese Hinduism.

Tahiti, in the Society Islands, is the largest island of which overseas collectivity of France?

French Polynesia has around two-thirds of its people living on Tahiti.

In the wild, pineapples are pollinated mainly by which animal?

Wild pineapples are pollinated mainly by hummingbirds; because pollinated fruit fills with hard seeds, Hawaii, once the world's pineapple-canning capital, banned importing hummingbirds.

Christopher Columbus first met the pineapple in 1493 on which island?

Columbus found the pineapple on Guadeloupe in November 1493, during his second voyage, and carried it back to Spain as piña de Indes, 'pine of the Indians'.

Botanically, what kind of fruit is a banana?

Botanically a banana is a berry, a fleshy fruit that develops from a single ovary; it grows on the largest herbaceous flowering plant in the world, not a tree.

Which banana variety became the dominant Western supermarket banana in the 1960s?

The Cavendish replaced the Gros Michel, which Panama disease had wiped out commercially, in the 1960s; it is a seedless triploid Musa acuminata cultivar.

The mango is the national fruit of India, Pakistan and which other country?

The Philippines shares the mango as its national fruit with India and Pakistan; the mango tree is the national tree of Bangladesh, near where the fruit originated in South Asia.

The durian fruit is banned from some hotels and public transport in Singapore and Bangkok because of what?

Its lingering smell can persist for several days; the durian's Latin species name comes from the Italian for civet, whose musk the odour recalled.

Which is the largest of all tree-borne fruits, weighing up to 55 kg?

The jackfruit is the largest tree-borne fruit, up to 55 kg and 90 cm long; it grows straight from the trunk and is native to southern India.

Dragon fruit grows on what kind of plant?

Its Selenicereus cacti are native to southern Mexico and Central America.

Green papaya contains papain, an enzyme used in kitchens for what?

Papain, the protease in green papaya, is used for tenderising meat because it breaks down tough muscle proteins; it is the active ingredient in many commercial meat tenderisers.

In 1841 an enslaved boy on Réunion discovered how to hand-pollinate which crop?

Vanilla: 12-year-old Edmond Albius found the orchid's flowers could be fertilised by hand with a thin stick, freeing growers from its Mexican bee pollinators; Madagascar became the leading producer.

In pre-Hispanic Mesoamerica, cocoa beans were commonly used as what?

Cocoa beans served as currency: the Aztecs collected tribute in them and Spanish chroniclers recorded goods priced in beans; the cacao tree was domesticated over 5,000 years ago in South America.

Which country grew about 31% of the world's coffee in 2023, the most of any nation?

The earliest reports of coffee drinking are from Sufis in 15th-century Yemen.

Sugarcane, the raw material of rum, is native to which island?

Saccharum officinarum was domesticated in New Guinea around 8,000 years ago and spread through Southeast Asia and India; rum itself originated on Caribbean sugar plantations in the 17th century.

Which island declared the piña colada its official drink in 1978?

Puerto Rico named the piña colada its national drink in 1978; it was created in San Juan, where Coco López coconut cream, developed in 1954, made the recipe possible.

Victor "Trader Vic" Bergeron claimed to have invented the mai tai in 1944 in which city?

Trader Vic Bergeron said he mixed the first mai tai in 1944 at his Oakland, California restaurant; rival Donn Beach of Don the Beachcomber claimed one from 1933.

The mojito, a traditional Cuban punch, is built on white rum, sugar, lime, soda and which herb?

Mint, usually spearmint or Cuban yerba buena, is muddled with sugar and lime for a mojito; sugar cane juice was the traditional sweetener.

The daiquiri takes its name from a beach and iron mine near which Cuban city?

Daiquirí is a beach and iron-mining village east of Santiago de Cuba; American mining engineer Jennings Cox is credited with inventing the drink there around 1898.

The ukulele developed in 1880s Hawaii from small guitars brought by immigrants from which country?

Three Madeiran cabinet makers are credited as the first ukulele builders.

The Hawaiian island of Niʻihau is famous for leis made of what?

Niʻihau leis are strung from tiny shells, such as kahelelani and momi, gathered on its beaches and pierced by hand; plumeria, orchid and tuberose are the most common flower leis.

Disney's Moana sails in search of which demigod, voiced by Dwayne Johnson?

Maui, the shape-shifting demigod voiced by Dwayne Johnson, stole the heart of the goddess Te Fiti; Moana must find him and return it to save her island.

Tom Hanks's desert-island film Cast Away was shot on Monuriki, an island in which country?

Monuriki is one of Fiji's Mamanuca Islands; Hanks's character, a FedEx troubleshooter, is stranded there for four years after his plane goes down in the South Pacific.

Sloths' shaggy coats are home to symbiotic green what, which camouflages them in the canopy?

Green algae grow in grooves on sloth hairs, tinting the coat for camouflage in the canopy; some moth species live nowhere else but in sloth fur.

Poison dart frogs get their toxins mainly from what?

The frogs' alkaloids come from their diet of ants, mites and termites; captive-bred frogs raised on crickets and fruit flies are not toxic at all.

The bee hummingbird, the smallest bird in the world, is native to which island?

The bee hummingbird is endemic to Cuba, including the Isla de la Juventud; about 5 cm long and under 2 grams, it is the smallest bird in the world.

The capybara, native to every South American country except Chile, holds what title among the world's animals?

Largest living rodent is the capybara's title; it is a semi-aquatic relative of the guinea pig.

The jaguar is the biggest cat in the Americas and ranks where in size among the world's cats?

Only the tiger and lion are larger; it is the only Panthera species native to the Americas.

Orangutans survive in the wild only on which two islands?

Orangutans survive only on Borneo and Sumatra, home to three species: Bornean, Sumatran and the Tapanuli orangutan described in 2017; in the Pleistocene they ranged across Southeast Asia.

Malaria is spread by the bite of which mosquito?

Only female Anopheles mosquitoes transmit malaria, picking up Plasmodium parasites when they take a blood meal; symptoms begin 10 to 15 days after an infective bite.

Of Earth's roughly 3 trillion trees, about what share grow in the tropics and subtropics?

About 46%: a 2015 estimate put 1.39 trillion of Earth's 3.04 trillion trees in the tropics and subtropics, against 0.74 trillion in boreal forests and 0.61 trillion in temperate zones.