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Information on the wildlife of the middle and upper reaches of the Purus in Brazil is scarce, and this region is one of the major remaining gaps in our understanding of the distributions and population status of mammals in the Brazilian Amazon. In this paper, we present information on the diversity of mammals of the middle Purus, in the south of Amazonas State, Brazil. Based on rapid inventories in four protected areas, and line-transect censuses in one of them, we provide locality records that indicate expansions of the known range of six primate species and a squirrel. Species more frequently seen during censuses were small and mid-sized primates and rodents, while records of larger mammals, which are more sensitive to subsistence hunting, were infrequent or lacking. Deforestation in the area is relatively low, but the area is close to the so-called "arc of deforestation" that is moving north and west from the north of the state of Mato Grosso into the states of Acre and Amazonas. The middle and upper Purus basin has been little explored, but is far from pristine, and populations of most of the species that are vulnerable to forest degradation and hunting are already reduced, especially close to the major rivers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]