Exploring Real Life Kashyyyk

In Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith, fans witnessed the droid armies of the Separatists invading the Wookiee homeworld of Kashyyyk. Master Yoda was sent to help to defend Kashyyyk with his war council that included the Wookiee warriors Chewbacca and Tarfful. However when the Imperial troopers took control of Kashyyyk, Yoda barely escaped, fleeing the green world aboard his secret escape pod.

The lush jungle planet of Kashyyyk is home to a wide variety of plants, animals and insects. The gigantic wroshyr trees dominate the forests of Kashyyyk. The limbs in the forest canopy are so thickly intertwined that they form a natural cradle for Wookiee buildings. Entire cities are perched in the wroshyr branches, housing millions of Wookiees.

Here on Earth, Wookiees might feel right at home in the largest rainforest called the Amazon, located in South America. Tropical rainforests are located in Central America, Africa, Southeast Asia and Australia. And the less abundant temperate rainforests can be found in North America, Europe, New Zealand, Tasmania, and Chile. While rainforests only cover a small part of Earth (roughly 7 percent), they contain over 50 percent of all plant and animal life on the planet!

Why are they called rainforests?
The tropical rainforests are warm and wet year-round, with rainfall averaging anywhere from 100 to 400 inches a year (250 to 1,000 centimeters). The temperature rarely falls below 72 degrees F (22 degrees C), so it never freezes or gets too hot, making it a perfect spot for all kinds of animal and plant life. Often nicknamed the "lungs" of the planet, rainforests contain abundant plant life that provides oxygen while absorbing harmful carbon dioxide in the air.

What does the rainforest look like?

The rainforests of Earth have various important layers. At the very bottom is the forest floor where bacteria and fungi (different varieties of mushrooms) break down decaying plant matter like fallen leaves and branches, and create nutrients for the trees to quickly suck up. Because of this, the enormous tree roots and other plant life drain the soil of most of its nutrients, making the ground useless for such activities as farming.

The next layer is commonly referred to as the understory. This is where shorter trees, bushes and ferns grow. Above that is the leafy green top of the forest where the majority of living animals and plants thrive -- called the canopy. Everything from mischievous monkeys to breathtakingly beautiful flowers can be found on this top layer of the rainforest. Due to its thick layer of vegetation, most sunlight that shines on the rainforest is blocked out by the canopy. In Episode III, this is where the Wookiees would have most likely lived in their immense wroshyr trees.

At the very top of the rainforest, gigantic treetops poke out above the canopy of the trees. Referred to as the emergent layer -- it's in this layer of treetops (which are often taller than 200 feet or 60 meters) that many exotic birds call home.

What kinds of plants and animals live in a rainforest?
Because of the temperate climate and lush habitat, the rainforest is jam-packed with all kinds of plants and animals -- some which only exist in the rainforest and nowhere else on Earth. Scientists say that over 15,000 different animal and plant species can exist in a single acre of rainforest. There are over 75,000 types of trees growing in the rainforests today.

Even with hardly any sunlight, and poor soil conditions, the forest floor is teeming with a variety of creatures including unusual species of beetles, termites, ants, centipedes, tarantulas and the creatures that eat them such as shrews, jaguars and other larger animals. Right above the forest floor, the understory is alive with activity from more animals and beautiful insects like the rare Saturn Butterfly. But the canopy has the most wildlife action, housing all kinds of animals including several species of chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans, snakes, lizards, sloths, loris and more unusual animals like the endangered primate aye-aye. And at the very top, above the canopy in the emergent layer, live more than 20 percent of the world's bird population which include beautifully-plumed parrots and toucans.

Many of the animals that happily dwell in the rainforest have just recently been discovered by scientists such as the Maues Marmoset -- a species of monkey that you can fit in the palm of your hand! Or the giraffe-zebra like mammal called the okapi which was last large mammal to be discovered in the early 1900s.

However, out of all the creature activity in the rainforests, it's the insects that seem to be running things. Scientists estimate that there are more than 50 million different species of invertebrates living in rainforests. In Peru, it's not unusual to find 50 different species of ants in a single tree. One such ant called the Leaf-cutter Ant climbs trees and gathers leaves -- not to eat -- but to plant in the soil to grow a certain fungus it prefers to dine on instead.

Speaking of growing food, many of our favorite foods were actually discovered in rainforests, such as cashew nuts, Brazil nuts, peanuts, Macadamia nuts, paprika, cinnamon, vanilla, ginger, nutmeg, cocoa (used for chocolate), coffee, tea, sugar cane, cloves, yams, bananas, pineapple, mango, papaya, passion fruit, guava, tapioca, cucumber, avocados, sweet potato, cayenne pepper, oranges, grapefruit, lemons, limes and rice.

Do people live in the rainforest?
Many indigenous -- which means native -- groups of people have lived in the rainforests for centuries. In the Amazon rainforests of Brazil and southern Venezuela, the Yanomamo peoples gather all their food, clothing, and housing mainly from materials found in the rainforest where they live in small villages.

Why are rainforests in danger?

With the vast array of plants and animal species living in the rainforest, it's easy to see why the rainforests are crucial to protect. But did you know that many medicines can be made using plants found in the rainforests? Some scientists speculate that the cure for cancer could possibly be found in a plant we have yet to discover growing in the rainforest right this second. Unfortunately, because of high demand for land and farming, rainforests are being cut down at an alarming rate. Thirty acres of trees are cut in the tropical rainforests every minute, and one rainforest species becomes extinct every 15 minutes!

If you would like to learn more about rainforest and what you do to help preserve it, please visit your local or school library for more detailed books.