Donald Perry

This book kind of wasn't what I expected, but I enjoyed it nevertheless. I thought I was going to get a detailed description of the author's explorations in the upper stories of tropical jungle, but that was only one aspect of Life Above the Jungle Floor. It starts with the author explaining how he got into biology studies, and his excitement when he found that the treetop habitat was (back then) an unexplored area. He describes a lot of his methods in reaching the upper heights, using show more climbing ropes and even moving on pulleys along a rope strung between two large trees, so he could lower himself down into fragile canopies that would not support the weight of a person. I liked reading all the parts about the interesting animal life- insects and birds mostly- that he encountered. There is also a very interesting section on how life evolved to take advantage of treetop heights, and even new (to me) theories on why the dinosaurs went extinct, linking their demise with the advent of flowering and fruiting plants. The fourth focus of the book is, of course, concern about how rapidly the forests are being depleted, but that was only discussed in the final chapter.

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