A window to the future. What is the secret of the Shanay-timpishka river, where a person can be boiled alive

Deep in the heart of the Amazon, in the Mayantayacu region of Peru, there is the Shanay-timpishka river, where a person can be boiled alive. Its water temperature reaches up to 100 °C.

The name of the river translates to "boiled by the heat of the sun." Although it looks more like a scene from a horror movie, climatologists from the University of Miami say it could become a "window into the future" because it allows us to understand how rising temperatures during global warming will affect the composition of the forest, MailOnline writes.

The river was first discovered by geophysicist Andrés Ruzo. Although it has long been a legend in Peru, when the researcher heard about it, he thought that such a phenomenon could not exist. In his opinion, even a small river would require a huge amount of geothermal heat to boil, and the Amazon basin is far from active volcanoes. However, having decided to visit it, he confirmed the truth of the legend.

He says the heat of the air coming out of the river is so intense that you can feel it burning in your nose and lungs.

"I saw many animals fall in there, from birds to reptiles. Complex organisms like us do not cope well with such high temperatures. We literally start boiling alive," he explained.

The river has such a high water temperature due to hot springs fed by faults. When rain falls on the surrounding area, it collects in the porous sedimentary rock. As it moves through the rocks, the water is heated by the primordial heat of the earth's crust. Eventually, it encounters a large, advancing fault, or fissure. And as the water falls behind it, it forces the heated water up along the fault line to the surface.

Researchers from the University of Miami believe that the boiling river can serve as a natural experiment to see how nature will be affected by global warming.

"It really gives us a window into the future. The Amazon is going to get hotter whether we want it to or not. And this river will allow us to understand how rising temperatures will affect the composition of the forest," says Riley Fortier, lead author of the study, explaining that they will be able to find out which species will be lost and what the forest composition might be like in the future.

The team visited the river in 2022 and mapped all the tropical plants and trees found in 70 locations. They started upstream, where the temperature is lower, and then went down to the hottest part of the boiling river. Their maps showed that the diversity of plants around the hottest part of the river had plummeted, with only a few species able to withstand the heat.

According to scientists, this could be a sign of what the entire Amazon rainforest will look like in the future, with the onset of global warming.

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