Wildlife
Desert and dry scrubland describes any area that receives less than 250mm of rainfall a year. Not just the endless, baking sand dunes of popular conception, it includes arid areas in temperate regions. Plants in this habitat are well adapted to conserving water and often have to survive extremely hot days and cold nights when the temperature plummets. Deserts may appear to have very little life in them, but a closer inspection can reveal high biodiversity.
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Singing dunes
Billions of sliding grains of sand create a hum that echoes for miles.
Billions of sliding grains of sand create a hum that echoes for miles.
Australia's camels
Australia is now the only country where one-humped camels live naturally in the wild.
Australia's mulga country, or bush, is a dense woodland of acacias, ghost gums and bloodwoods, all rooted in the outwash of the Central Ranges. Most woody shrubs are thirsty and demanding but these tough plants have flourished despite the dry soil and some unwelcome invaders. In the 1880s, camel trains were the only way to cross the desert. But once roads were built, the camels were abandoned and are now feral. With no natural predators they have thrived here and Australia is now the only country where one-humped camels live in the wild. In the breeding season males do their best to mate with as many females as they can. They do this by frothing at the mouth and inflating their dewlaa - a sac on the roof of their mouth. It looks grotesque, but it is obviously attractive to the females and intimidates other males. When two bulls fight, it can get very serious as they use their necks to try wrestle each other to the ground. Over half a million camels now roam the Central Ranges and they are now considered serious pests.
Desert ants
Australia's deserts are populated by meat ants and bulldog ants.
Every morning in the Australian desert, meat ants head out to find last night's fatalities. After butchering the remains of a grasshopper, they will carry the body parts back to their bunker. Meat ants outnumber all other animals at floor level, and all other invertebrates are dead meat. By taking the body parts below ground, the ants give the mulga trees the nutrition they need to grow in the desert. There are over 1000 species of ant in Australia but bulldog ants are the fiercest. Each one is 4 centimetres of pure aggression, but they are not just out for themselves. Hunters from the colony will bring back insects and even small reptiles to feel the underground colony. They dig shafts that go 2 metres underground where the queen and her larvae live in the coolest and best protected chambers. Here, the queen produces a constant supply of larvae.
Little terror
The prey of the narrow-nosed planigale is often larger than it is.
The narrow-nosed planigale is one of Australia's smallest marsupials, and one of the toughest. Most of its meals are larger than it is, and will include scorpions and huge moths. In the underground cracks in which it shelters, it is almost 15 degrees cooler than out in the sun of the desert, but snakes are a constant threat. The inland taipan, for instance, is the world's deadliest snake and often slithers through the crevices in search of a meal.
Tough lizard
The sand goanna has to be tough to survive in Australia's deserts.
The sand goanna is also known as the racehorse goanna because of the speed with which they run over the red sands of the Australian desert. Reptiles like these are more successful at living ihere than mammals because they require less food. Meals can be scarce in the desert so the sand goanna will even eat scorpions if they can. Goannas do get stung in the process but they appear to be immune to scorpion venom. To protect its eggs from the harsh desert climate, the goanna lays them inside a termite mound to incubate. After nine months they are ready to hatch. When they do, they emerge from the eggs as fully-formed miniature adults. One by one they will climb out of the termite mound to enter one of the toughest habitats on earth.
Long-eared hedgehog
Aardvark
Crest-tailed mulgara
Rufous elephant shrew
Giant anteater
Mexican free-tailed bat
Straw-coloured fruit bat
African wild dog
Black bear
Cheetah
Coyote
Giant-striped mongoose
Grey wolf
Leopard
Lion
Maned wolf
Meerkat
Otter
Puma
Raccoon
Red fox
Serval
South American grey fox
Spotted hyena
Stoat
Tibetan fox
Weasel
White-nosed coati
Wildcat
Bactrian camel
Bighorn sheep
Camels
Dromedary camel
Giraffe
Grant's gazelle
Mongolian gazelle
Nubian ibex
Pronghorn antelope
Saiga
Springbok
Walia ibex
Plateau pika
Black-footed rock-wallaby
Eastern grey kangaroo
Red kangaroo
Asian wild ass
Black rhinoceros
Horses, donkeys and zebras
Hamadryas baboon
Human
Olive baboon
Patas monkey
Ring-tailed lemur
African bush elephant
Brants's whistling rat
Brown rat
California mouse
Damaraland mole rat
Gunnison's prairie dog
Red squirrel
Lesser flamingo
Humboldt penguin
Pigeon
African fish eagle
American black vulture
Andean condor
Golden eagle
Harris hawk
Kestrel
Lammergeier
Peregrine falcon
Red kite
Demoiselle crane
Malleefowl
Pied kingfisher
Ostrich
Barn owl
Burrowing owl
Little owl
Short-eared owl
Burrowing parrot
Little corella
Ring-necked parakeet
Socotra cormorant
Crows and ravens
Drongos
Raven
Red-billed quelea
Sand martin
Starling
Swallow
Nile crocodile
Black mamba
Boa constrictor
Cape dwarf chameleon
Galápagos land iguana
Inland taipan
Marine iguana
Perentie
Sand goanna
Saw-scaled viper
Shingleback skink
Slow worm
Thorny devil
Galápagos giant tortoise
European honey bee
Saharan silver ant
Gossamer-winged butterflies
Hummingbird hawk-moth
Painted lady
Swallowtail
Desert locust
Deserts and xeric shrublands is a biome characterized by, relating to, or requiring only a small amount of moisture.
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Ecozones where this habitat is found
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Desert rose 
Dragon's blood tree 
Grasses and sedges 
Orchids 
Saguaros 
Common toad
Camel spiders
Tarantulas