How do animals and plants adapt themselves to live in intense heat, (in hot deserts)and in intense cold (in cold deserts), How do they survive with very little water?
Answers
Answer:
- The hair and feathers of desert animals, found in thick layers on animals such as camels, desert sheep and ostriches, can insulate against both heat and cold. Sweating and panting, desert adaptations known as evaporative cooling, helps many large mammals to accelerate heat loss.
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Explanation:
Modified Exoskeleton
Animals living in cold or temperate deserts have thick exoskeletons to protect them from the cold dry winds.
Bactrian camels found in the Gobi and Takla Makan deserts have thick and coarse, hairy coats to keep them warm during the cold winters, and they shed these thick coats as summer sets in. Bactrian camels also have thick eyebrows, eye lashes and nostril hair to prevent sand from entering their eyes and nose.
Like Bactrian camels, many reptiles live in cold deserts. They often have thick and spiny exoskeleton to prevent loss of water while their cold blood regulates their body temperature according to the surrounding temperature.
Animals such as the Peruvian fox have thick fur coat that protects against cold winds. Cold desert animals have a layer of fat that acts as insulation to prevent loss of body heat.
Desert Camouflage
Camouflaging is a survival technique used by animals to protect themselves from predators. The accumulation and melting of snow changes the landscape of cold deserts drastically. Many cold desert biome animals camouflage to match their changing surroundings.
The ptarmigan bird is an excellent examples of this. Ptarmigans have brownish feathers during the warm summers when the landscape is brown and muddy. The bird molts into white feathers during winter months when the ground is covered in snow.
Burrowing
A common adaptation in temperate desert animals is burrowing during extreme weather. Animals such as lizards, snakes and rodents burrow themselves under layers of sand and use their body heat to keep themselves warm.
Water Conservation Methods
Like hot deserts, cold deserts are also arid and water scarce, which makes it essential for desert animals to conserve water in their body. Bactrian camels are known for having two humps for storing fat that can be converted into energy and water when needed.
Animals living in cold deserts biome are uricotelic, that is, they convert their excreta from urea to uric acid to retain water in their body.
The two main adaptations that desert animals must make are how to deal with lack of water and how to deal with extremes in temperature. Many desert animals avoid the heat of the desert by simply staying out of it as much as possible.
Where do animals in the desert get their water from?
Since water is so scarce, most desert animals get their water from the food they eat: succulent plants, seeds, or the blood and body tissues of their prey.
How do desert animals prevent water from leaving their bodies?
Desert animals prevent water leaving their bodies in a number of different ways. Some, like kangaroo rats and lizards, live in burrows which do not get too hot or too cold and have more humid (damp) air inside. These animals stay in their burrows during the hot days and emerge at night to feed.
Other animals have bodies designed to save water. Scorpions and wolf spiders have a thick outer covering which reduces moisture loss. The kidneys of desert animals concentrate urine, so that they excrete less water.