🌴 Rainforest animals

A rainforest is hot and wet nearly every day, so trees grow tall and close together. Most of its animals never touch the ground: they live up in the leaves, where the fruit and the sunshine are. More kinds of animals live in rainforests than anywhere else on land.

The biggest and the smallest here: the green anaconda and the leafcutter ant

🧒 our measuring child, 4 ft1.2 m🐍 Green anaconda, 26 ft8 m long🐜 Leafcutter ant, 0.3 in7 mm long🔍 Pip the pangolin zoomed in 400 times on the leafcutter ant

⚖️ Compare them

14 animals here

Record holders here

Heaviest: the Asian elephant, 3 to 6 tons2.8 to 5.4 tonnes1
Lives longest: the Asian elephant, 47 years47 years1

Rainforest animals for kids, A to Z

🐘 Asian elephant: Asia's elephant: smaller ears than the African one, the same clever trunk.
🦧 Bornean orangutan: Orangutan means "person of the forest" in the Malay language.
🐹 Capybara: The biggest rodent in the world, and a very good swimmer.
🐒 Chimpanzee: A clever ape that uses sticks as tools to fish for termites.
🐸 Golden poison frog: It is small and bright yellow, and its skin is very poisonous.
🐸 Goliath frog: The biggest frog in the world, and it hardly makes a sound.
🐍 Green anaconda: The heaviest snake alive floats in rivers with just its eyes showing.
🐆 Jaguar: The biggest cat in the Americas, and it loves to swim.
🐜 Leafcutter ant: An ant that grows a fungus garden on leaves it carries home.
🐟 Red-bellied piranha: A fish with sharp teeth that is much shier than the stories say.
🦜 Scarlet macaw: A bright red parrot that can crack hard nuts with its beak.
🦥 Three-toed sloth: The slowest mammal, hanging upside down in the rainforest trees.
🐅 Tiger: The biggest wild cat, with stripes that hide it in tall grass.
🦍 Western gorilla: A gentle giant that builds a new leafy bed every night.

Smithsonian's National Zoo, checked 30 October 2026.