Desert Animals

Desert animals are some of the most clever survivors on Earth. They live in places where temperatures can swing from 50 °C in the day to below freezing at night, and where months may pass without a drop of rain. Through millions of years of evolution, desert animals have developed extraordinary ways to find water, escape the heat and survive on almost nothing.

  • Top heat trickBe active at nightMost desert animals are nocturnal
  • Top water trickGet it from foodMany never drink water at all
  • BiggestCamelDrinks 100 L in 10 min, stores energy in humps
  • SmallestDesert antsSome can survive ground temperatures of 70 °C
  • FastestPronghorn antelopeapprox. 100 km/h in American deserts
  • Most venomousInland taipan snakeLives in the Australian Outback

How long can desert animals go without water?

Days without drinking
Human3 days
Camelapprox. 2 months
OryxMonths
Kang.ratForever

A human needs water within 3 days. A kangaroo rat never needs to drink at all, getting all its water from the seeds it eats.

How do desert animals survive the heat?

Desert animals use several main tricks to beat the heat:

  • Be active at night. Most desert animals are nocturnal (active at night) or crepuscular (active at dawn and dusk). They sleep through the worst heat of the day in burrows, under rocks, or in the shade of plants.
  • Dig down. Just a few centimetres below the surface, the desert is much cooler. Many animals (kangaroo rats, fennec foxes, sand cats, desert tortoises) spend most of the day in burrows.
  • Have big ears. Big thin ears let heat escape from the blood. Fennec foxes, jackrabbits and elephants in the Namib all have unusually big ears for their body size.
  • Have pale colours. Pale fur reflects sunlight better than dark. Most desert mammals are sand-coloured.
  • Sweat carefully. Camels do sweat but only when their body temperature gets very high. Their body temperature can swing from 34 to 41 °C without harm.

How do they get water?

Most desert animals never see free water for weeks or months at a time. They get water from:

  • Their food. Plants and prey animals contain water. The kangaroo rat of North America can extract enough water from dry seeds that it never needs to drink at all.
  • Their own metabolism. When the body burns food for energy, water is produced as a byproduct. Most desert animals make full use of this "metabolic water".
  • Fog and dew. Animals like the Namib fog beetle climb dunes at night and let fog condense on their backs to drink.
  • Concentrating their urine. Desert mammals have extra-efficient kidneys that release very little water in their urine and droppings.
Fact The fennec fox of the Sahara is the smallest fox in the world but has the biggest ears in proportion to its body size. The ears help shed heat AND help it hear prey underground.

Famous desert animals around the world

  • Sahara and Arabian deserts: dromedary camels (one hump), fennec foxes, sand cats, addax antelopes, horned vipers.
  • Gobi and central Asia: Bactrian camels (two humps), snow leopards, gobi bear (one of the rarest bears on Earth).
  • North American deserts: coyotes, roadrunners, Gila monsters, desert tortoises, kangaroo rats, jaguars.
  • Australian deserts: red kangaroos, dingoes, emus, perentie monitor lizards, thorny devils.
  • Southern African deserts: meerkats, oryx, springbok, desert elephants, Namib fog beetles.
Did you know? The Namib Desert fog basking beetle stands on its head at the top of a sand dune at dawn. Fog condenses on its back, runs down grooves to its mouth, and the beetle gets a drink without ever seeing water.
Deeper dive: extremophiles, water budgets and convergent evolution

Desert animals are masters of the water budget, the difference between water taken in and water given out. A kangaroo rat eating dry seeds gains approx. 0.05 ml of metabolic water per gram of seed eaten, but loses water through breathing, droppings and (small amounts of) sweating. The trick is to keep losses below gains. Kangaroo rats achieve this with several adaptations: nasal passages that recapture moisture from exhaled breath (a counter-current heat exchanger in the nose cools exhaled air below body temperature, condensing the water back out before it leaves the body), kidneys that produce urine four times more concentrated than seawater, and droppings so dry they crumble. Together these adaptations let kangaroo rats live their entire lives without ever drinking.

Extremophiles are organisms that can survive conditions lethal to most life: extreme heat, extreme cold, extreme dryness, extreme salt, extreme radiation, extreme pressure. Desert animals are among the most studied extremophiles. The Saharan silver ant (Cataglyphis bombycina) can be active when ground surface temperatures reach 70 °C, by foraging in short bursts of just 1 to 2 minutes between rest stops on shaded ground. Its silvery hairs reflect sunlight and dissipate body heat as infrared radiation. The Namib desert beetle has an upper temperature tolerance of around 50 °C, the highest of any insect. Studying these adaptations is informing engineering as well as biology; the Namib beetle has inspired new technologies for collecting drinking water from fog.

Desert animals are striking examples of convergent evolution: unrelated species evolving similar features because they face similar environmental pressures. The fennec fox of the Sahara and the cape fox of southern Africa are not closely related but both have the small body, large ears and pale colouring of typical desert foxes. The kangaroo rat of North America and the jerboa of the Sahara look almost identical with their long hind legs for hopping, big eyes, sandy fur and ability to live without water; they are also unrelated. The thorny devil of Australia and the horned lizard of North America both have spiky bodies and the same trick of channelling water through grooves between their scales to their mouths.

Famous desert wildlife examples include the desert tortoise, the desert bighorn sheep and the desert scorpion.