How Desert Animals, Birds and Reptiles Keep Cool
Desert animals have either developed ways to cool down, or they keep out of the heat.
- Many small mammals live in shelters or burrows underground. They come out to search for food at night and store their food in their burrows.
- Camels have long legs to keep the sand’s heat away from their bodies, and long hair for warmth.
- The Golden Mole lives just below the surface in sand deserts. It hardly comes out.
- Fennec Fox has huge ears that lose heat for its body – and furry soles on its feet to help with walking on hot sand
- Kangaroos lick their forearms to cool themselves down
- Gerbils stay underground during the day and come out at night
- Desert tortoises spend over 90 per cent of their time underground in burrows to avoid extreme heat and cold and conserve moisture and food
- Karlahari ground squirrels have a bushy tail and use it as a sunshade
- Turkey Vultures urinate on their legs or fly up into cooler air if they get too hot
- The Sand-diving Lizard holds its feet up in the air to cool down, when the sand is too hot
- Large mammals find shelter in the shade of a rock or tree. Some of them lose heat through their skin by evaporation
- Some mammals, like hares, have large ears with lots of blood vessels, which remove heat.
- The dog and cat families don’t have sweat glands, so they pant to cool down
- Scorpions can't stand bright light, but can survive freezing cold.
Desert birds have adapted to heat and cold:
- They can’t sweat, so they pant or flutter to cool down.
- They use muscles to hold their feathers upright when there is a breeze. This cools their skin and traps a layer of air that insulates them from heat and cold.
- They find shelter underground in the shade of rocks or bushes.
- They fly at high altitudes to avoid the heat.
Reptiles can control their body temperature by gaining or losing heat from their surroundings – lying in the sun or moving into cooler, shady places.
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