Lost... In the Jungle of Doom (6 page)
Read Lost... In the Jungle of Doom Online
Authors: Tracey Turner
Y
ou 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.
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to find out more about different 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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Y
ou 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.
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to return to the beginning and try again.
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to find out tips about 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.
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Y
our 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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.
Y
ou’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
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.
If you decide to walk through the pain and find help as quickly as possible, click
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.
Y
ou 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.
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to learn more about 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.
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I
n 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.
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to find out more about bushmaster snakes.