The Amazon jungle is the word's largest tropical rainforest. It blankets an area equivalent to half the continental United States, and teems with an astonishing variety of wildlife. This bewildering assortment of plants and animals, probably the most complex ecosystem on earth, is of great interest to scientists, as we search for new drugs and possible cures for cancer, as well as new animals to describe and domesticate for food. But for most of the people living in the Amazon river basin, the animals are avidly hunter for food.