Brazil’s Carnival turns focus to glitzy parades

Brazil is known for its exotic fauna, but the creatures on display Sunday night for the opening round of Rio’s exuberant Carnival parade were a motley crew even by local standards.

Full grown adults dressed up as Nemo the fish rubbed shoulders with weightlifting wolves with enviable six-packs, while bare-breasted dancers gyrated atop floats shaped like giant crustaceans or bedecked with XXL ants.

The Carnival competition sees the city’s top samba groups, or schools, parade in the Sambadrome, each delivering an over-the-top, hour-long display aimed at capturing the annual title.

No excess is deemed too much, and each year the bar is raised that much higher. Sunday’s all-night-long displays saw a float shaped like a mammoth wedding cake presided over by a larger-than-life Pope Francis, a herd of elderly gentlemen in jewel-toned bull costumes complete with sequin-covered horns, and a dancing teepee surrounded by native Brazilians in green feather headdresses.

Though each school ostensibly has a theme, the costumes are often so varied and sometimes unidentifiable that it can be hard to identify the common thread.