These pythons can be very large, often 3 – 5 metres, but there are records of these pythons reaching 8.5 metres. They have brilliant shiny scales which reflect an Amethyst colour in direct sunlight. They live in tropical rainforests and can be aggressive. They hunt fruit bats, rodents and other ground-dwelling animals at night and are quite shy during the day so it is sometimes difficult to spot them from our Daintree crocodile tours but we do find them.

Barramundi live in the Daintree River right around where we do our Daintree river tours, usually reaching 1.2m in size however they can grow to 1.8m. They are carnivorous, mostly eating smaller fish and crustaceans.

Spectacled Flying Foxes are also known as Fruit-Bats. They get their name form the pale coloured rings around its eyes which look like spectacles. In Australia, they only live in the north-eastern wet regions in Queensland. They are also found in New Guinea and some off shore islands. They spend most of their time in the canopy of tall rainforest trees and mangroves. They set off at dusk in search of food, using their good eyesight and sense of smell. Predators of the Flying Foxes include Pythons and the White-breasted Sea-eagle. These animals are important dispersers of seeds in the rainforest and were listed as being a threatened species in 2002. As they are a nocturnal animal they are sometimes hard to find during the day when we do our Daintree cruises.

Mangroves are plants which are able to live in soils which are regularly waterlogged. We see mangroves when we do our Daintree river cruises. They have adaptations for accessing air in these environments, namely their root structures. Daintree has many different species of mangroves, 30 out of the 34 that exist in Queensland. Some mangroves have buttressed roots, others have stilts and some have snorkel-like roots which stick out of the mud. Mangroves are essential to many ecosystems, they act as breeding and feeding grounds for many species of fish and crustaceans, protect the coastline from erosion and have high productivity. This productivity directly affects the food chain in their ecosystem – mangroves produce organic matter which is consumed by many species of crabs, molluscs and worms. These primary consumers are then eaten by secondary consumers such as young fish and other predators, such as the crocodiles we see on our Daintree crocodile tours, who become third level consumers when they reach adulthood.

Mangroves therefore also influence economic values, through commercial fisheries, and recreational values by keeping birdwatchers (Such as the people who flock to the region for Daintree bird watching tours) and recreational fishers busy.