Animals of the Tropical Evergreen Forest (With Pictures)

Tropical evergreen forest animals include monkeys, apes, sloths, bats, big cats, elephants, parrots, hornbills, snakes, frogs and millions of insects. Warm, wet weather all year and many layers of trees give them food and shelter at every height. India’s evergreen forests hold lion-tailed macaques, hoolock gibbons and great Indian hornbills.

This page focuses on the animals, not the trees. For the forest itself and its place among the world’s forest types, start with our main guide to types of forests. The plants are covered in our article on the evergreen forest and its trees.

What animals live in the tropical evergreen forest?

In hot, rainy places, tall trees grow close together and stay green all year; such a woodland is a tropical evergreen forest. It is often simply called a tropical rainforest. The table below sorts its best-known animals into groups. The world examples come from National Geographic and the Smithsonian’s National Zoo; the Indian ones come from official pages.

Our longer guide to the tropical rainforest describes the climate and layers in which all these animals live.

Why does the tropical evergreen forest have so much wildlife?

Three things make these forests so crowded with life: steady heat, plenty of rain and a tall, layered structure.

In India, NCERT’s Class 11 chapter on natural vegetation says evergreen forests grow where yearly rain is over 200 cm and the mean annual temperature stays above 22 °C. Trees there can reach 60 m or more. There is no fixed season for leaf fall, flowering or fruiting, so food is on offer somewhere in the forest every month.

The result is very high biodiversity, which means the variety of plant and animal species in a place. The Amazon shows the scale. According to National Geographic, it is home to nearly 1,300 bird species, more than 430 mammal species, 3,000 types of fish and 2.5 million different insects.

Which animals live in each layer of the rainforest?

National Geographic describes four layers in most rainforests: emergent, canopy, understory and forest floor. Each layer gets a different amount of light, water and wind, so each has its own animals. Learning the animals layer by layer is the easiest way to remember them.

Emergent layer

The emergent layer is made of the few giant trees, up to 60 m tall, that poke above the rest. Its branches are thin and windy. Animals here mostly fly or glide, and the ones that climb are small and light. In the Amazon, birds, bats and butterflies live up here, and the harpy eagle hunts as the top predator. Tiny pygmy gliders, which are marsupials, do the same job in Australian rainforests.

Canopy

The canopy is a thick roof of leaves and branches, about 6 m deep, below the emergent trees. National Geographic says it holds more animals than any other layer because fruit is so plentiful. Scarlet macaws and keel-billed toucans pluck fruit with their big beaks. Spider monkeys and howler monkeys feed and call loudly. The quiet two-toed sloth chews leaves and shoots. Thousands of insects live here too, and they feed reptiles such as the gliding Draco lizards of Southeast Asia.

Understory

The understory lies below the canopy. It is darker, stiller and even more humid. Many hunters use the gloom for camouflage, which means blending in with the background. The jaguar’s spots look like leaves or flecks of sunlight. The green mamba, a deadly snake of the Congo, matches the foliage. Brightly coloured tree frogs thrive because the damp air keeps their skin moist.

Forest floor

The forest floor is the darkest layer. Few plants grow here, but fallen leaves rot quickly. Fungi and bacteria do most of this decay, while termites, slugs and worms feed on the litter. In South America, collared peccaries, armadillos and anteaters dig through it for insects, roots and tubers. Larger hunters prowl the darkness, and small rodents such as the lowland paca hide among tree roots.

In Central Africa, the forest floor is also the main home of gorillas. The Smithsonian’s National Zoo explains that, because of their large size, gorillas spend most of their time on the ground. Every gorilla over three years old builds nests of bent branches and leaves for resting by day and sleeping at night. Adult males usually sleep on the ground, while females may nest either on the ground or up in trees.

What animals are found in India’s tropical evergreen forests?

NCERT names three homes for India’s tropical evergreen and semi-evergreen forests: the Western Ghats (western slope), the north-eastern hills and the islands of Andaman and Nicobar. Each region has a protected area with a published animal list. Our page on tropical evergreen forests in India maps where these forests grow.

Western Ghats: Silent Valley National Park

Silent Valley National Park lies in Kerala’s Palakkad district. In a 2009 feature, PIB counts this park among the few untouched stretches of moist evergreen forest left in the country. No other place, PIB adds, has as many lion-tailed macaques. This monkey has a grey mane and a tufted tail.

The feature lists at least 34 mammal species. The threatened lion-tailed macaque, Nilgiri langur and Malabar giant squirrel are among them. Tigers, leopards, leopard cats, civets and mongooses also live in the valley. A bird survey recorded 138 species, with the black bulbul the most common. Rarer birds include the Ceylon frogmouth and the great Indian hornbill.

The macaques depend closely on one tree. PIB notes that the flowering of Cullenia exarillata strongly affects where lion-tailed macaques occur.

North-east India: Dampa Tiger Reserve

Dampa Tiger Reserve sits on the western edge of Mizoram, beside Bangladesh. The National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) describes its vegetation as tropical evergreen to semi-evergreen forest.

NTCA’s brief note on the reserve carries no date, but it lists a long set of animals. Primates include the hoolock gibbon, an ape, along with several macaques, Phayre’s leaf monkey, the capped langur and the slow loris. Wild cats include the leopard, clouded leopard, golden cat and marbled cat. The same note describes Dampa’s tiger density as low. Two bears live there: the Himalayan black bear and the Malayan sun bear. Plant-eaters include the Indian elephant, gaur, sambar and barking deer. The Chinese pangolin and the Malayan giant squirrel complete the picture.

Andaman and Nicobar Islands: Great Nicobar

Great Nicobar is the southernmost island of the Nicobar group. UNESCO lists it as a biosphere reserve, with 2013 as its year of nomination. Its page says the island has 103,870 ha of tropical evergreen forest and over 1,800 recorded animal species, some of them endemic, which means found nowhere else.

UNESCO names several notable endemic or threatened animals there. The crab-eating macaque is a long-tailed monkey. The Nicobar tree shrew is a small, squirrel-like mammal. The Nicobar megapode is a ground bird, and the reticulated python is a huge snake. The forest is also home to the Shompen, an Indigenous people who hunt and gather along its rivers and streams.

In tropical evergreen forest, one of the common animals is…?

This fill-in-the-blank question often appears in school tests. A common answer is the elephant, and monkeys and deer are also correct. In India, all three live side by side in Dampa’s evergreen forests, where NTCA lists the Indian elephant, several macaques, sambar and barking deer.

Some older books also mention the lemur. True lemurs live only on Madagascar. In India, the nearest relative is the slow loris, a small primate that is active at night.

How are rainforest animals adapted to their home?

Life in a crowded, dark and wet forest has shaped the bodies and habits of its animals.

• Flying and gliding. Bats, birds, pygmy gliders and Draco lizards move between trees without touching the ground. National Geographic notes that bats are the most diverse mammals in most tropical rainforests.
• Strong beaks and grasping hands. Toucans, macaws and hornbills crack open fruit. Monkeys, gibbons and sloths grip branches with hands, feet or tails.
• Camouflage. Spotted cats and green snakes vanish against leaves and patches of light.
• Loud calls. Howler monkeys and many birds shout across dense foliage, where they cannot see far.
• Seed spreading. Fruit-eaters drop seeds in their droppings far from the parent tree. National Geographic calls gorillas a keystone species, an animal whose role holds the ecosystem together, partly for this reason.

Compare these with the very different survival tricks of deciduous forest animals, which must cope with a dry season of bare trees. Our guide to the difference between tropical evergreen and deciduous forests sets the two forests side by side.

What threatens the animals of tropical evergreen forests?

Most rainforest animals cannot survive outside the forest, so losing trees means losing wildlife. National Geographic names unsustainable industrial and farm development as the main damage to the world’s rainforests. Demand for meat and other products adds pressure.

NCERT lists similar causes for wildlife decline in India. They include clearing land for farms, settlements, roads and mines, commercial poaching and forest fires. PIB’s feature on Silent Valley reports that graziers sometimes burn forest to get fresh grass shoots.

Protected areas such as Silent Valley, Dampa and Great Nicobar are the main shield for these animals in India.