Animal+Adaptations+and+Advantages+Desert

The desert biome is well known as one of the harshest environments in the world, consisting of unique abiotic factors in tandem with widely variant temperatures. The following are three animal adaptations that are each present among multiple organisms.


 * __1. Nocturnal and Crepuscular Behavior__**

Many desert animals, like desert foxes (C4), escape the heat of the day by burrowing, only to hunt at night during the much colder temperatures.

Some animals, like the rattlesnake and the Gila monster, only come out of their burrows at dawn or dusk. These cold-blooded creatures can lose healthy levels of water if exposed to the scorching heat of the daylight hours and would not function efficiently in the cold and dark night hours, including hunting and movement. The existence of this behavioral caution in many animals is supported by the high diurnal temperature variation of the desert (C5) (C1).






 * __2. Enlarged Extremities and Limbs__**

Some desert animals, like the Desert Hare and fat-tailed gecko, have longer and larger extremities utilized in different ways. This adaptation present in many desert animals spans in purpose from cooling down or storing more fat for later times.

The Desert Hare, for example, has larger ears than normal and aids the Hare in the way that the constant flow of air goes around the air which effectively cools the blood vessels (C6). The fat-tailed gecko is another example where it has an enlarged tail where it can store fat which helps it because fat layers around the body prevent heat from leaving so this gives the Gecko the ability to store fat effectively while also staying cool (C7) (C2).






 * __3. Desert Animals have Ways to Obtain the things they need to Avoid Dehydration__**

Water is a scarce resource in the desert and as a result, the animals in the desert have found ways to extract the water needed for survival. Animals can get the moisture they need to avoid dehydration by developing methods to extract moisture from the food they eat as it may be impossible for them to get moisture any other way. Snakes, for example, are not able to usually get moisture any other way than extracting moisture from the things they eat like Pocket Mice or Kangaroo Rats (C8) (C3).



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