With the so many heavy branches, interlocking vines and thick layers of epiphytes, many animals live out their lives like the epiphytes, never setting foot on the ground. Flying animals, like birds, bats and insects, are perfect candidates for life in the trees. You would expect animals that climb for a living, animals like lizards, monkeys and squirrels, to spend much of their lives in the forest canopy. They start life as tadpoles in the water-holding bromeliads high in the tree tops. Earthworms and other soil-dwelling creatures burrow through the accumulated debris and organic material on high branches among the epiphytes.
Some mosquito larvae specialize in an existence in the water of tree holes.
It really is another world. You can lean back with a powerful pair of binoculars or a telescope. You can climb up steep, wet hillsides and look over at the tree tops. A slender tree can be climbed like a rope, hand over hand, but you cannot get very far before it bends over or breaks. From time to time, large trees crash to the ground making their epiphytes available for study, but the more mobile animals leave quickly.