How many species does the Amazon Rainforest contain?

Written and fact-checked by The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

The Amazon Rainforest is the world’s richest and most-varied biological reservoir, containing several million species of insects, plants, birds, and other forms of life, many still unrecorded by science. The luxuriant vegetation encompasses a wide variety of trees. Major wildlife includes jaguars, manatees, tapirs, capybaras and other rodents, and several types of monkeys.