Place: SAHARA DESERT
(Image from livescience.com)What is it?:
- The Sahara Desert, Arabic for 'The Great Desert', is the hottest place on Earth, being the third largest desert and almost the same size as the United States or China at 9,400,000 km2 (3,629,360 sq mi).
- Most rivers and streams there are only seasonal, except for the River Nile which runs through the desert into the Mediterranean sea.
- The Sahara used to be a fertile grassland many, many years ago, but due to the Earth's Orbital Shift, it dried up and became an arid desert.
- The Sahara Desert is located in North Africa, covering Algeria, Chad, Egypt, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Sudan and Tunisia.
- Bordering the Sahara, is the Mediterranean Sea to the North, The Sudan and the Valley of Niger River to the South, the Red Sea to the East and the Atlantic Ocean on the West.
- The desert is divided into several sections; western Sahara, the central Hoggar (Ahaggar) Mountains, the Tibesti Mountains, the Air Mountains, an area of desert mountains and high plateaus, Ténéré desert and the Libyan desert.
What's the weather like?:
- The Sahara Desert is known to be the hottest place on Earth at 58 degrees Celsius (136.4 degrees Fahrenheit) as its hottest recorded temperature.
- The desert is very dry and arid It rains less than an inch every year in one half of the Sahara Desert, but in the other half, it gets up to 4 inches per year. This rain can come down very heavily when it happens.
- Sand Storm and Dust Devils are caused because of the north-easterly winds in the Sahara reaching hurricane level. Sand Dunes can often reach up to 590 feet tall. The wind is what causes the deserts shape and landscape as it shifts the sand around.
- Some mountain ranges in the Sahara often get snow at the top of them. The first time it ever snowed there was when a snowstorm stopped traffic in Algeria in 1979. There has also been other rare snow storms since.
Who and what lives there?:
- Not many people at all live in the Sahara Desert because of it's hot and arid climate, but most of the people who live there are called Nomads, who move from place to place. Most of them are Berbers or Arabs. Most of the people living in the Sahara are Islamic.
- There are several animals and species like antelopes, cheetahs, ostriches, foxes, camels, goats, wild dogs, gazelles, many venomous snakes and many, many more, which live in the desert and have adapted to live there. There are 70 species of mammals, 90 species of resident birds, 100 species of reptiles, and many species of arthropods.
- The types of plants in the Sahara Desert are ones that are adapted to a very hot climate that don't need a lot of water. You will often find several Cacti, Acacia, Doum Palm, Date Palm, Thyme and more.
Animal: ARABIAN (DROMEDARY) CAMEL Camelus Dromedarius
Basic Facts:
- The Arabian Camel, unlike some other camels, has only one hump on its back.
- They have been domesticated for around 3,500 years and used as pack animals.
- From their feet to their hump, they can grow over 7 ft, and up to 726 kg.
- Camels are one of the very few animals that walk with both legs on one side at the same time (both left ones, then both right ones...)
Diet:
- They are Herbivores, which means that they eat whatever plant that they can find, apart from the poisonous ones which the camel will recognise.
- They get their water from the plants as there is not much water in the desert.
- They eat as much as they can when they find the food, as they do not know when they will never get it because of the lack of plant growth.
Habitat:
- Arabian/Dromedary Camels live in the Sahara Desert and the rest of Northern Africa as well as South East Asia. They mainly live in desert, sandy areas.
Adaptations:
- The Dromedary Camel have two rows long eyelashes and bushy eyebrows to stop any sand and dust from getting into its eyes.
- They can also close their nostrils so that sand or dust can't get in them.
- The hump on their backs is stored with up to 36 kg of fat, which can give them the energy to keep going through the heat for miles. The fat can also be broken down into water and energy when it's hard to find any food or water.
- They can conserve liquid for a long time as they don't sweat very often.
- They have wide feet for walking on rocks and hot sand.
- Very large intestine that absorbs every bit of water from their food.
- Long, strong legs for walking long distances in the heat.
- Camels "spit" because they may feel that they are under threat and are trying to protect themselves or their food. The spit, however, is not spit is not saliva. It's actually partially digested contents of one of the chambers of their fore-stomachs.
- Camels have big, strong lips so that they can eat thorny and dry desert vegetation.
(Image from puzzle-games.eu)