The least aggressive of any primate, miriquis come together for their midday cuddle. With their Atlantic forest habitat largely gone, only about 500 miriquis remain.
Feared extinct for sixty years until a small population was rediscovered in the 1980's, the thin-spined porcupine is a very primitive and weird looking porcupine species.
The Alagoas curassow is one of the world's rarest birds with only eighty individuals, all of which live in the backyard of conservationist Roberto Azeredo near Belo Horizante.
While cutting native trees is illegal, much of Brazil's Atlantic coastal forest has already been replaced with imported eucalyptus trees that can be harvested to support the timber needs of Brazil's huge cities.
Usually photographed to show the city backdrop, Rio's Christ the Redeemer actually lies within the oldest, largest city park in the Americas. In 1861, Brazil's Emperor ordered that this huge area be replanted with native forest.
The band of forest that once ended along the southern coast of Brazil is now one of the most endangered ecosystems on earth, largely because of extreme population pressure. I was able to track down specimens in the wild for a dozen species of plants…