48 Fun Facts About Tropical

What sets the tropics' edges about 23.4 degrees from the equator?

Earth's tilt, about 23.4 degrees, sets how far from the equator the Sun can ever stand directly overhead; the tilt is slowly shrinking, so each tropic creeps about 15 metres closer to the equator every year.

Which line of latitude marks the tropics' northern edge?

Tropic of Cancer was named in ancient times, when the Sun stood in the constellation Cancer at the June solstice; Earth's slow wobble has since moved that point out of Cancer altogether.

Dust blown across the Atlantic from which desert fertilises the Amazon rainforest with phosphorus?

The Sahara sends dust from an ancient lake bed in Chad across the ocean each year, and the phosphorus in it replaces what heavy rain washes out of the Amazon's soils.

The Amazon River holds which world record?

Largest discharge of water: the Amazon pushes fresh water so far into the Atlantic that Spanish explorer Vicente Yáñez Pinzón, sailing into its mouth in 1500, named it the 'Sweet Sea'.

Which layer of a tropical rainforest is richest in plant and animal life?

The canopy forms a leafy roof that soaks up most of the sunlight, so very little reaches the ground and the forest floor stays dim and surprisingly clear of undergrowth.

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

Queensland's reef nearly ended James Cook's first voyage: in 1770 the Endeavour ran aground on it, and the damaged ship had to be beached for seven weeks of repairs.

Coral bleaching happens when corals lose what?

Their symbiotic algae feed corals and give them colour; heat-stressed corals expel them and turn white, but a bleached coral is not dead and can survive if the stress passes.

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

The breeding female is the largest fish and ranks first; all clownfish are born male, and when she dies the breeding male changes sex to take her place while the rest move up a rank.

A tropical cyclone in the northwestern Pacific is called what?

A typhoon is the same storm as a hurricane; only the location differs, which is why 1994's Hurricane John became Typhoon John when it crossed the International Date Line.

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

The doldrums could becalm a sailing ship for weeks, because the hot air there rises instead of blowing along the surface; meteorologists call the belt 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 in the 1830s?

Charles Darwin spent five weeks in the Galápagos in 1835; noticing that its mockingbirds differed from island to island helped start his doubts that species were fixed.

Which nation of coral atolls is the lowest-lying country on Earth?

The Maldives is so low that in 2009 its president and ministers put on scuba gear and held a cabinet meeting underwater to draw attention to rising seas.

Borneo, the world's third-largest island, is shared by Indonesia, Malaysia and which country?

Brunei, a small sultanate on the north-west coast, holds only a sliver of Borneo, yet the island's name began as early European travellers' version of 'Brunei'.

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

Angel Falls in Venezuela is named not for angels but for US pilot Jimmie Angel, who landed on the mesa above it in 1937, bogged his plane in the mud and needed 11 days to walk out.

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

Kilimanjaro, in northern Tanzania, wears an ice cap just three degrees from the equator, but more than three-quarters of that ice has melted away since 1912.

Which Southeast Asian city lies just one degree of latitude, about 137 km, north of the equator?

Singapore sits so close to the equator that its temperature barely changes through the year, staying high and almost uniform in every month.

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

Hinduism sets Bali's calendar: on Nyepi, the Hindu New Year, the whole island observes a day of silence, with streets and beaches empty and even the airport closed.

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

French Polynesia's main island hosted the surfing events of the 2024 Paris Olympics: organisers chose Tahiti's Teahupo'o reef for its giant waves, about 15,000 km from the host city.

Sixteenth-century sailors named which tropical fruit after the goblin face they saw in it?

Coconut comes from 'coco', a goblin used to scare children in Iberian folklore: sailors saw its eyes and mouth in the three dents at the base of the shell.

Which fruit did Columbus first encounter on Guadeloupe in 1493 and carry back to Spain?

Pineapple became a symbol of wealth in Europe after Columbus brought it home; a Scottish earl even crowned his hothouse with a stone pineapple about 14 metres tall.

Botanically, what kind of fruit is a banana?

Botanically a banana is a berry, a fleshy fruit that develops from a single ovary, while strawberries and raspberries are not berries at all; the banana 'tree' is really a giant herb.

Which banana variety replaced the Gros Michel as the West's standard supermarket banana?

Cavendish took over after Panama disease wiped out Gros Michel plantations in the 1950s; because Cavendish plants are identical clones, a newer strain of the same fungus has since begun attacking them too.

Which fruit is the national fruit of both India and Pakistan?

Mango fever once gripped China too: in 1968 Mao passed on a gift of mangoes from Pakistan's foreign minister to workers, who preserved them and paraded wax copies like holy relics.

The durian is banned from some hotels and public transport in Southeast Asia because of what?

Its lingering smell can hang around for days, yet naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace, once he dared to try one, likened the flesh to a rich custard flavoured with almonds.

Which fruit, native to India, is the largest borne on any tree?

Jackfruit can reach about 45 kg, and instead of dangling from twigs it sprouts straight out of the trunk and thickest branches of its tree.

Dragon fruit grows on what kind of plant?

A cactus: dragon fruit grows on climbing cacti from Mexico and Central America, known as night-blooming cereus because each big flower opens after dark for a single night.

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 could be farmed around the world once 12-year-old Edmond Albius showed how to fertilise each orchid flower by hand with a thin stick and a flick of the thumb; freed in 1848, he died in poverty.

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 grows about a third of the world's coffee, far more than any other nation?

Brazil's coffee empire began, legend says, with a bouquet: in 1727 Francisco de Melo Palheta charmed the wife of a neighbouring colony's governor, who hid coffee seeds among the flowers she gave him.

Sugarcane, the raw material of rum, was first domesticated thousands of years ago on which island?

New Guinea's farmers tamed sugarcane thousands of years before it reached the Caribbean: Columbus carried the first canes to Hispaniola on his second voyage.

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

Puerto Rico made the piña colada its official drink in 1978, yet two rivals on the island both claim to have invented it: the Caribe Hilton hotel says 1954, the Barrachina restaurant says 1963.

Which rum cocktail did Victor 'Trader Vic' Bergeron claim to have invented in Oakland in 1944?

Mai Tai comes from the Tahitian word for 'good'; Bergeron said he mixed the first one at his Oakland restaurant, though rival Donn Beach insisted he had created it back in 1933.

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

Mint is muddled into every mojito; Havana's La Bodeguita del Medio claims to be the drink's birthplace and shows off a wall inscription signed 'Hemingway', though his biographers doubt he was a regular.

Which cocktail takes its name from a beach and iron mine near Santiago de Cuba?

Daiquiri is named after Daiquirí, the beach where US troops waded ashore in 1898; American engineers at the nearby iron mines, Jennings Cox among them, are credited with mixing the first ones.

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

Portugal's island of Madeira was home to the three cabinet makers who built the first ukuleles after landing in 1879; King Kalākaua took up the instrument and had it played at royal gatherings.

HMS Bounty's ill-fated voyage of 1787 was sent to Tahiti to collect which plant?

Breadfruit was wanted as cheap food for enslaved workers in the West Indies, so the Bounty's great cabin became a greenhouse for over a thousand potted plants; the crew mutinied three weeks after leaving Tahiti.

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?

Fiji's Monuriki hosted a shoot that stopped for a year so Tom Hanks could lose the 50 pounds he had gained for the early scenes and grow a castaway's beard; the crew made another film in the gap.

Sloths climb down from their trees only about once a week, mainly to do what?

Defecate: a sloth climbs down about once a week, though it is at its most vulnerable on the ground, and can store up to a third of its body weight in droppings between trips.

Poison dart frogs get their toxins mainly from what?

The frogs' alkaloids come from their diet of ants, mites and termites, so frogs raised in zoos on crickets and fruit flies are not poisonous.

Which bird, native only to Cuba, is the smallest in the world?

Bee hummingbird: only 5 to 6 cm long and about two grams in weight, it burns energy so fast that it may visit as many as 1,500 flowers in a single day.

The capybara, a semi-aquatic native of South America, holds what title among the world's animals?

Largest living rodent, the capybara takes to the river when threatened and can stay under for up to five minutes to hide from predators.

Which is the biggest cat in the Americas, ranking third in the world behind the tiger and the lion?

The jaguar's bite is powerful enough to pierce turtle shells, and it has an unusual way of killing larger prey: biting straight through the skull.

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?

Female Anopheles mosquitoes alone pass on malaria, because only females drink blood, which they need to develop their eggs; the males feed on nectar.

The tropics hold the largest share of Earth's trees, which total roughly what?

3 trillion, roughly 400 trees for every person, came from a 2015 count that was over seven times earlier estimates; the same study found people cut down more than 15 billion trees a year.