Besides offering tranquilizers, contraceptives, and stimulants, rain forests also produce many kind of foods, having a profound influence on our diet. Fruits like bananas and citrus, vegetables such as peppers and okra, nuts like cashews and peanuts, drinks such as coffee, tea, and cola, oils like palm and coconut, flavorings such as cocoa, vanilla, sugar, and spices all originated from the rainforests. The foods we have sampled are only a tiny fraction of the potential foods that rainforests offer. In Ecuadorˇ¦s tropical forests alone there are 15,000 plant species compared with the figure of 13,000 plant species in all of Europe.

Rainforests are our greatest living libraries; they house our most ancient species and human cultures, thus providing an opportunity for the scientists to investigate evolution. By studying animal and plant species, we can understand more about our environment. Over 50% of the Earthˇ¦s species and 90% of primates are found only in rain forest of Latin America, Asia, and Africa.