It’s often said that the seed of scientific discovery is within us all. It’s the natural curiosity that we experience when confronted with the unknown. Well in a place like the Amazonian rainforest, the unknown assumes mythic proportions. I’m Jim Metzner, and this is the Pulse of the Planet, presented by the American Museum of Natural History.
Mark Plotkin is the Director of the Amazon Conservation Team, a group which studies the medicinal plants of the Amazonian rainforest.
“On my first trip to the Amazon, I was just overwhelmed by the sensory overload. No matter how much you read, no matter how many films you watch, you’re just not prepared for the assault on your senses that the rainforest is. So it’s not just that it’s green everywhere, it’s thousands of shades of green. The sounds are everything from haunting sounds to scary sounds. The first time I heard a howler monkey, I thought that if I had been a conquistador, I would have gotten on the ship and gone back to Spain. It sounds like a jaguar making love to a lawn mower.”
ambience: Howler Monkey
“The smells are so rich. They’re so pungent. And every sense is overloaded. And I think as scientists, which in some sense we all are, the first thing you try and do is sort those things out. Where is this smell coming from? What is that incredible color of that flower up there? Where is this bizarre leaf attached? So in some ways, it’s almost the beginning of the scientific method that everybody makes when they go to the rainforest for the first time. To try and make sense of this riotous profusion of life.”
As part their efforts to learn more about the rainforest profusion of life, the Amazon Conservation Team is working with local communities whose knowledge of medicinal plants dates back thousands of years.
Pulse of the Planet is presented by the American Museum of Natural History. Additional funding for this series has been provided by the National Science Foundation.