Desert Animals

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Desert Animals
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What is a desert?

• The desert is a land of extremes extreme heat
  and extreme dryness sudden flash floods and cold
  nights. Because deserts are such a difficult
  places to live in they often have names likes
  "Death Valley," "the empty quarter," and "the
  place from where there is no return."

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How dry is a desert?

• Deserts are usually very, very dry. Even the
  wettest deserts get less than ten inches of rain
  a year.
• In most places, rain falls steadily throughout
  the year. But in the desert, there may be only a
  few periods of rains per year with a lot of time
  between rains. When it does rain, there may be
  quite a downpour! After the rain, desert flower
  bloom

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Is it always hot in a desert?

• Everyone knows that during the day many deserts
  are hot, very hot. Temperatures can get as high
  as 100 degrees fahrenheit are not uncommon. Yet
  at night, the same deserts can have temperatures
  fall into the 40s or 50s? With no clouds or plant
  life to keep the heat in, it begins to cool as
  soon as the sun goes down.

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Types of desert

• Believe it or not, deserts come in two varieties
  hot and cold.

The Antarctic is actually the Earths largest
desert. The main form of precipitation in a cold
desert is snow -- but only ten inches or less per
year.
The Sahara is the largest hot desert. These are
covered in sand and rock.
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Can any plants grow in a desert?

• Deserts are the home to many living things.
• Plants that grow in a desert have to be
  especially adapted to the dry conditions. They
  must be able to collect and store water  and
  reduce water loss.
• Desert plants look quite different to plant that
  grow in other places.

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Which animals live in the desert?

• Animals in the desert must survive the intense
  heat, searing sun, and lack of water.  Animals
  that live in the hot desert have many
  adaptations. Some animals never drink, but get
  their water from seeds (some can contain up to
  50 water) and plants. Many animals are
  nocturnal, sleeping during the hot day and only
  coming out at night to eat and hunt. Some animals
  rarely spend any time above ground.

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Desert Animals

• There are many animals in the desert.
• They can survive by eating other animals or by
  eating plants that store water.
• To protect them from the hot sun, they stay in
  the shade or in their shelter.
• Animals may build their shelters inside plants.
• Some animals sleep during the day and are active
  at night.
• Some animals have hard shells to protect them
  from losing much water.
• More animals live in hot deserts than in cold
  deserts.

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Anteater
Camel
Roadrunner
Gila monster (lizard)
Scorpion
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Camels

• Camels are well suited to survive the conditions
  of the desert. The hump in their back stores fat
  they store water in the lining of their
  stomachs. Camels have extra long eyelashes to
  keep the sand out of their eyes, and big flat
  feet to help them walk through the sand.

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Some of the animals that live in the desert.
A sidewinder is a small agile snake. It is mainly
nocturnal and takes shelters from the heat of the
day in the burrow of another animal or under a
bush.
The fat sand rat overcomes the problem of the
unpredictability of desert food supplies by
laying down a thick layer of fat all over its
body when there is plenty of food It then lives
off this fat when food is short. Active day and
night, this gerbil darts about collecting seeds
which it carries back to its burrow. 
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Red Kangaroo

• Like many desert animals, red kangaroos prefer to
  sleep in the day, when the desert is at its
  hottest, and wake up at nighttime, when it is
  actually very cold. That explains why many
  animals have fur, even in hot deserts.

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Desert Lark

• The desert larks feathers are a light brown
  color, which means that it is well camouflaged in
  the desert sand.