Deserts

Deserts

A desert is a dry and sandy land. It is plain and dry. It hardly ever rains.

There are hardly any plants in deserts. Barrel Cactus and Compass Cactus are the most popular plants or maybe the only plants in the desert.

You find this environment under the Equator.

  

The horrid sun makes it feel like you’re in an oven. The sun is blazing in the deserts.

  

Usually only camels live in deserts. Camels store food and drink in there humps to survive. Camels have wide feet that stop them sinking into the sand.

There is water in deserts. Deserts sometimes get rain. This rainwater seeps into the sand and collects in rock. The water then builds up and forms a pool called an Oasis.

Grasslands are found when there is too much rain for deserts but not enough rain for  a forest. Large numbers of animals can be found living and feeding on grasslands, including  Zebras, Antelopes and lions.

Not all deserts are sandy. Some are rocky or covered in piles of pebbles. But if it's sand you're after, why not head for the Sahara and watch a sand dune shift?

Hammada is the Arabic word for a rocky desert that's been stripped bare of sand and dust by the wind.

In the Sahara Desert the temperature can reach well over 50®C. At night though, it can drop below freezing as the heat is lost on the ground.

The San people of the Kalahari Desert store water in empty ostrich-egg shells.

The desert tortoise pees on its back legs to cool itself down.

A desert only gets 25cm of rainwater every few years. 

The sensational Sahara's as big as the USA.

Surviving the desert is NO picnic. Forget tucking into your sand-wiches. In the desert, food takes second place. You can go without eating but without water you'd be dead in two days.

Europe's the only continent that doesn't have a desert.