Here alone are 300 species of trees. They are at once the pillars and the superintendents of the rain forest, the frame of the house and its chief occupants. The spiny understory palm trees make baskets from branches growing out of their trunks, which become compost machines for falling leaves, which in turn sustain the trees. The Parkia tree rises to the sun and spreads a flat umbrella over the others. There is full employment.
Trees support lizards and insects, which themselves support birds and monkeys.
Army ants bivouac and hang from tree limbs in living nests, with their pupae asleep in the center. If a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it, according to Mittermeier, he would be better off. He tells me that the scariest sound he ever heard in the rain forest was the explosive crack of a dead trunk, followed by a rush of plummeting branches so loud it might have been a storm. We catch sight of one preening on a high branch. Its head has a flattened crest that looks like a fan from the side, with an eye at bottom center.