Caatinga | Biomas do Brasil | Ep.6

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Paulo Jubilut

Você sabia que mais de 1.000 espécies de vertebrados conseguiram se adaptar aos períodos de estiagem...

Video Transcript:

What's up guys! It's my pleasure to have you here for another video of Professor Jubilut and let's start this educational process addressing this gorgeous animal here, the ball-armadillo The smaller Brazilian armadillo and it's only found in our country. The main characteristic of this animal is exactly its capability to fold its armor for protection.

So it looks like a ball, which gives it the characteristic name of "ball-armadillo". Unfortunately, many locals enjoy hunting them because they appreciate the meat of this animal, which is seriously endangered. It's so endangered that I wasn't able to find any ball-armadillo here, I'm using a replica.

The ball-armadillo is just one of the various animals we will address now, here in the Caatinga, so put some blood in that eye because there's a bit more Caatinga for you. ♫ The animal biodiversity here in the Caatinga is extremely high, and another detail is that many of these animals are endemic, they are only found here and I want to make a remark, exactly about this issue, about endemism. In other words, the Caatinga is important because both animal and vegetal species present a lot of endemism.

Many living species are only found in this region, hence the importance of preserving the Caatinga. ♪ As the plants, the animals also need adaptations to be able to survive in a place that has a long period of drought and a very short period of rain. The first adaptation they have, is the hability to consume food from both seasons - the sagui monkeys do that!

They like to pick the green mangos during the rain season and eat them, then the seeds are discarded. They come back to the same place during the drought season, to eat those seeds they had discarded. You can also have a very fast mating cycle, utilizing only the rain period.

So many animals will lay their eggs, have their babies in 3, 4 months - Why? To be able to utilize a larger volume of food. Another adaptation we can have here, related to the animals, is their hability to migrate.

When the drought season starts, several animals move to a place that has a larger volume of rain. To mountain regions and even to other biomes, such as the Amazon and the Atlantic Forest that make border to the Caatinga. And if it's not possible to run away, if you have to spend the drought period in here, you can enter a dormancy phase, you can bury yourself, such as various amphibians that enjoy doing that, then you just wait the moment with more humidity to come back to life and be able to do all your activities.

Most animals here in the Caatinga are of course, invertebrate, such as ants and bees, which are quite important to this biome. Guys, take a look at what I just found, an ant known as dinoponera, this is one of the world's largest ants. It's got almost 1.

2 inches, almost half of my finger And it's got an extremely painful bite. Ants are quite important to disperse seeds here in the Caatinga. So preserving these animals it's also fundamental for the maintenance of vegetal species in this biome - look how cute!

Guys, what a gorgeous animal! Take a look at what just found! How lovely!

A beehive attached to the trunk of this mango tree. If I put my ear here, I hear a very high buzzing sound - it's awesome! "- Gee Jubijubao, you are gonna die standing near this beehive!

" Not really, because these bees known as "pipe-bees" don't have stings. So I'm relatively safe near them. These bees are extremely important, as well as the other species of bees here in the Caatinga, because they help polinizing the plants, but there's a catch: They produce a type of honey with antibacterial properties, it's natural antibiotic.

The local folks know that, so they come here, they cut the trees and harvest the honey. That's why the bee population of the Caatinga is dwindling, and of course, the plants are the ones that will suffer, because without bees they are unable to reproduce, to generate seeds and produce new plants. The end of bees means the end of various species of plants here in the Caatinga - let me get out of this place because they are agitated and I'm gonna die!

♪ The Caatinga fish are a whole new case. That's why they need to have adaptations for the drought period, and this period means serious business for the Caatinga fish, as long as rivers like this one behind me - actually it's a water stream - they dry, so this one you see now only exists because I'm here during the rain season. If I come back in three months, this won't be here anymore.

We use to say that most rivers of the Caatinga are intermittent, because they dry out on the drought season and resurface on the rain season and the fish need to be prepared for this behavior. One of the strategies they utilize, which I find quite interesting, is to lay their eggs during the rain season and these eggs - the embryo inside these eggs - will slowly develop. Most of the time the eggs will hatch one and a half year after they were laid.

They are pretty resistant eggs, only found in Caatinga fish. It's worth mentioning that we have of one Brazil's main rivers, in the Caatinga biome, which is the Sao Francisco river, or "Old Chico" for the intimate. Now, regarding adaptation for the drought period, amphibians are second to nobody.

As you know, these amphibians have a thin skin and need moist environments like this one here to be able to survive, then I ask you this: How the Caatinga amphibians - and there's a lot of of amphibians here - manage to survive when these water bodies disappear? For many years scientists have tried to find out, and later they realized that Caatinga amphibians bury themselves, and not only that, they can bury themselves up to 6. 5 feet of depth, besides they enter a phase of estivation, which is almost a type of dormancy and they stay there during the whole drought season.

When the Caatinga starts to become moist again with the rains, the amphibians return to life - so to speak - and start to mate again, laying their eggs and having a very fast life cycle to be able to produce their babies during the short rain season. ♫ An interesting detail is that the Caatinga timing has to be very precise. "- What is 'timing' Jubilut?

" You need to lay your eggs in the right moment, because if you lay them in the wrong time, for instance, they might be exposed to the drought and the heat too long. Then they will be destroyed. On the other hand, if your eggs stay exposed too long when the rain season starts the other animals return to their activity and mind you, these animals are starving.

So if your eggs turn out to be laying around, they will be eaten and then you won't be able to produce your babies. So when it comes to mating, all species here have to calculate when it's going to rain, when the drought starts, when the other animals will be hungry when they won't be active and then, taking all in account, you will see when it's the right time to lay your eggs. If you make a mistake, it's over!

It's worth mentioning that this is an instinctive calculation. No animal can predict what time is going to rain, what time there will be drought, but throughout evolution these animals were programmed to mate and lay their eggs in certain times of the year, taking in account when it's rainning and when it's not rainning, due to all these issues. Concerning reptiles, the biodiversity here in the Caatinga is pretty high, regarding these animals.

Just so you know, the number of reptiles found in this biome is almost the same number of reptiles found in the whole Europe. And the coolest part is that these animals stay active during the whole year here in the Caatinga, both on the drought period and the rain period, you will have almost the same activity of reptiles. Why?

Because these animals manage to stay long periods without drinking water. And what's awesome is that you walk through the Caatinga, you walk down the trails and you see the little lizards running around because they stay on these rocks warming on the sun, because as you may know, reptiles don't have the capability to keep their body temperature constant. Guys, I just found a snake here in the middle of these bromeliads, a black snake, I can't see what that is, let me see if I can catch it.

Look over here, over here! Where is it? It was right here!

Where? Is it gone yet? Here, here, take a look!

Holy smokes! It's quick huh? It's long gone!

Did you catch it? It escaped! ♫ Now let's talk about birds, here in the Caatinga we will find around 500 species.

It's not a biodiversity that big! However, when it comes to Caatinga, endemism is the most important - about 160 species out of 500 are only found in this biome. And a big part of them are endangered species, due to the loss of habitat - there's even less Caatinga, for them to be able to survive - mainly because of illegal capture.

Many of these birds are caught to be kept in captivity. That's why in 2000, the Caatinga lost the little blue macaw, it's extinct from nature and today there's a serious work done by scientists who are trying to bring the little blue macaw out of captivity, back into the natural environment, a very complex task - imagine you taking a bird that was born in a zoo, and make it able to survive here. ♪ The moco squirrel is a symbol of the Caatinga, a rather important herbivorous when it comes to spread seeds of various species of plants, unfortunately the meat of these mammals is quite appreciated by some local folks, who hunt them with no mercy.

Now when it comes to mammals, the biodiversity is much higher than the birds. About 19 species of mammals are endemic. And good part of them is also endangered, for a change.

An interesting detail is that they are endangered because of hunting. Because the people who live here in the Caatinga, find normal hunting animals for cultural reasons and many times it's a commerce, it's not like - "I'm hungry and I need to hunt" - no! There's an illegal hunting commerce going on in the Caatinga biome.

Now, another reason to decrease the population of mammals and make them endangered, is also the loss of habitat - the less Caatinga there is the less places to obtain food there are. And the most endangered species are top predators such as the jaguar, the puma, the ocelote, these animals need large spaces to obtain food. As long as the Caatinga is smaller by the day, the amount of food is also smaller and the population of these predators start to dwindle until it reaches extinction.

Here in the Serra das Almas, is still possible to find the puma. This trail camera was able to catch the exact moment this jaguar marked its territory. Here there's another snap of a puma flagging other jaguars about who owns this territory.

Too bad that seeing this kind of thing is rarer by the day. It's worth mentioning that the extinction of a species derails the whole biome. As long as these species are somehow connected by food chain relations here in the Caatinga.

♫ As all the other Brazilian biomes, the Caatinga also suffers with ravage since the colonial period where several economic activities took place in the region. Just so you know, only 53% of the whole original vegetation is left. So almost half the Caatinga has been somehow altered.

It's worth mentioning that this is a heavily abandoned region by the authorities, although politicians love to talk about the northeast outback during election campaigns, but very little is done to preserve this biome, specially to develop sustainable activities for the people who need it to survive. It's worth mentioning that this is an ongoing destruction, so the deforestation of this place still quite accelerated, mainly regarding livestock and monoculture - we have to remember that cotton monoculture, which was recently developed here in the northeast, destroyed large areas of Caatinga. We also have deforestation for logging, and coal, as long as northeast folks still cook on wood-burning stoves, so a ton of wood is extracted from the Caatinga for domestic appliance.

It's something we have to consider. What do you think happens to deforestation here, when the gas prices rise? It increases because people start to utilize more their wood stoves.

It's worth mentioning that the soil here in the Caatinga is shallow and many times arenaceous, it's hardly able to store water, that means it's extremely difficult to recover a region, after you deforested it. That's why we have several areas here in the Caatinga, undergoing a process of desertification. There are even entire towns undergoing this process, which is nothing more than the loss of nutritious properties by the soil, so you no longer can plant there.

That happens because of the wrong utilization of this soil, so the folks go there, try to develop some activity, livestock, agriculture, but they don't know how to do it, they utilize it in the wrong manner and then the soil wears out, loses all its productive capability and the region turns into a true desert. We shoud also remember, that hunting and trafficking of animals are relatively common activities and you know how the animals are extremely important to disperse, to spread the plants seeds. Without the animals, the plants will be entirely harmed and of course, you will have the decrease of the vegetal biodiversity and not only of animal biodiversity.

They even told me this story, about how hunting anteaters is cruel, so these local hunters entered the Caatinga and took down the tree because the anteater climbed the tree and the first thing they did was to cut off its pawns, because the anteater uses its claws to defend itself. So these are truly cruel and illegal activities that endanger the biodiversity of the Caatinga. ♫ It's worth mentioning that the folks who live in this region, love to use fire to clear up the terrain and of course this is dangerous - imagine if you try to burn something when the vegetation is dry.

This fire can spread and destroy large areas of vegetation. Fire also emits carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, one of the main contributors to climate change, that's already acting here in the Caatinga, which just went through one the worst drought periods of its history. Almost 5 years with almost no rain and caused by these climate changes.

Of course, from the moment the climate changes, you have an increase in the drought period and decrease of the rainy period, and you watched in our series about Caatinga, how the species that live here are adapted to a certain period of drought and a rain period afterwards, if that changes for a few months, the whole biodiversity will be damaged We must also remember that this is the most populated semi-arid of the planet, almost 20 million people call the Caatinga home, people who many times go through a situation of extreme poverty and will utilize nature's resources to be able to survive. They will deforest, they want the wood, they will hunt, so we need a tender look to this place, by the authorities, in order to develop a place where people manage to survive without exploiting the Caatinga resources. And those who say "ah, there's poverty there because the climate is dry", that's a big lie!

We have drier regions than the Caatinga, such as California in the USA, and it's one of the richest regions on the planet. Why? Because they invest there, they take care of it, the authorities have eyes to it, so the region is able to prosper regardless the adverse climate.

♫ So it's about time we stop the prejudice, and realize how is important to preserve the Caatinga biodiversity. To protect this region means to protect the rivers, to protect the animals, to protect the plants. Mainly, to protect our history and our culture.

All in all, needless to say that was a treat to be here with you, a big hug, bye! Subs: msfreelancer http://tinyurl.