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Top 10 Animals in The Sahara Desert - Endangered & Unique Animals

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While there are hot deserts,there are also polar deserts.The most known polar desert is Antarctica.

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If a land form does NOT receive about 10 inches of rain every year,its not considered a desert.

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This video contains animals that can be found in the desert but,its 6 minutes long.

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This video contains animals that can be found in the desert but,its 6 minutes long.

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Animals in the Sahara by Tara Year 4M(Nature Smart)

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This is a picture of the largest desert in the world .Which is the Sahara desert

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This is a picture of the largest desert in the world .Which is the Sahara desert

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This is a picture of the The Thar desert,another desert that is located in Asia

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This is a picture of the The Thar desert,another desert that is located in Asia

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The desert has many things that people didn't know about,Like the arabian camel and the mesquite tree.

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Mesquites are so common in West Texas we may, perhaps be forgiven for failing to appreciate them. But they are, indeed, remarkable. The Pima Indians knew the tree as the "Tree of Life." Interestingly, the people of Bahrain still describe one Mesquite tree that way. It is over 400 years old and lives near the highest point in Bahrain, far from any known source of water. Mesquites have been called "an elemental force of nature - too valuable to exterminate, yet too dangerous to go unwatched." The common Mesquite grows in dry areas almost everywhere on earth, thanks to humans who treasure the food and wood it provides.

Every part of a Mesquite is useful. Today as in the past we use the wood in great quantities for smoking meats. Mesquite wood is an excellent fuel and was sought after by all Native American groups and Europeans as well. Havard in 1884 described how Europeans found Mesquite wood: "Sometimes, in the Southwest, camps are pitched on plains where no timber or fuel of any sort is visible. It is then that the frontiersman, armed with a spade and axe, goes digging for wood. He notices a low mound, on whose summit lie a few dead mezquit twigs; within it he finds large, creeping roots, which afford an ample supply of excellent fuel." It is the frequent use of Mesquite roots for fuel that is the source of the expression that men in the West "dig for wood and climb for water."

Mesquite gum is widely used to treat infection and irritation, sores, wounds, sunburn, and chapped skin. It is good restorative for dysentery, diarrhea, stomach and intestinal distress and hemorrhoids. It was also used as a treatment for lice, cough, sore throat, mouth sores, laryngitis, and painful teeth and gums. Poulticed leaves were used for red ant bites, and a tea made of the leaves was used as an eyewash for inflammations of all kinds, including pink eye. The white inner bark is useful as an intestinal antispasmodic and was also used to stop excessive menstrual bleeding and to reduce fevers. As early as 1871 one Texas county alone gathered over 12,000 pounds of gum for shipment to the East where it was made into gumdrops and mucilage. We still ship the gum to Australia.

Mesquite beans were a major, if not the primary food source for the desert Apache, Pima, Cahuilla, Maricopa, Yuma, Yavapai, Mohave, Walapi, and Hopi tribes. Most Mesquite beans are sweet, typically containing about 30 percent sucrose; they produce a sweet flour that can be baked into breads, mixed in water to make coffees and teas, and added as an ingredient to many other foods. For natives, the fact that the tree fruits reliably, even in dry years, and that the beans keep well made them a valuable commodity. In fact, the best Mesquite fruit grows during droughts. The mesocarp (a juicy pulp between the seeds and the bean pod) has 7 to 10 percent fiber and 39 percent protein (twice that of other legumes). Recently we've learned that the flour has a remarkably stabilizing effect on blood sugar levels, making it safe for diabetics and a great snack for all. It is said that if you eat Mesquite flour foods, you won't be hungry again for four or five hours.

Mesquite gum has a long history of medicinal use. Southwestern tribes prepared it in water and used it as an eyewash for treating infection and irritation. They used it for several skin problems including sores, burns, and chapped or raw skin, and sunburn. It was particularly useful for settling stomach distress, and curing bouts of dysentery, diarrhea, and food poisoning. They also took it for intestinal pain, ulcers, and hemorrhoids.

More than 200 plants and animal species depend on the mesquite tree for survival and reproduction. Bees in arid areas rely on its pollen to produce food for their young and honey for the winter. Deer, javelina, coyotes, jackrabbits, skunks, turkey, quail, and doves greedily consume the beans along with livestock of all kinds.

Removing Mesquites in Arizona has resulted in reducing the numbers of 36 of the 82 kinds of birds that depend on the flood-plain mesquite forest habitat. No wonder - removing Mesquites results in a significant decline in the soil's nutrient availability, along with a decline in the amounts of Phosphorus, Potassium, and Sulfur - everything suffers when Mesquites are removed.

Mesquite is superbly adapted to xeric conditions. It maintains two sets of roots - extremely long tap roots to reach deep water sources, and broad, shallow roots to capture water from brief rain events. Mesquite tap roots have been found as much as 200 feet below the surface and the surface roots may extend 50 feet or more past the outer edge of the crown. The tree can also grow to magnificent proportions. The biggest one in Texas has a trunk almost 6 feet in diameter, stands 56 feet tall, and has a 87 foot crown.

Mesquites adjust both root and crown growth to fit their circumstances. The same species that grows to 55 feet, may only grow to 2 or 3 feet on dry or windy sites. Reports from early travelers in Texas indicate that it grew as single trees, as savannahs, and as vast expanses of scrub thickets throughout the state.

Savannahs - large open space grasslands with scattered trees - are the most productive way for Mesquites to grow. In savannahs Mesquite provides shade for livestock, creates wildlife habitat, and improves growth and abundance of perennial grasses under its' canopy. Mesquite can improve the productivity of grasslands by enhancing soil fertility, improving availability of Nitrogen, Potassium, Phosphorus, and Sulfur. Nitrogen yields may be as much as 15 times higher in the soil under Mesquites than in non-Mesquite soils. Perennial grasses grow stronger and more abundantly under Mesquite.

Unfortunately, Mesquite is quite well-suited to conditions that prevail in most ranching situations. It would be fair to say that ranching has been a great benefit to Mesquite. Livestock disperse Mesquite seeds and fire suppression ensures that seedlings thrive. Removing Prairie Dogs removed the only animal that browsed it and suppressed its growth. These changing conditions have caused Mesquite to grow in vast scrub thickets which now make ranching difficult, and in some cases, impracticable. And, at present, there is no known way of reversing these conditions, at least in any affordable way.

In light of the many benefits Mesquite provides, it is beginning to appear that Mesquite should be treated as a resource-to-be-managed rather than as a threat to business. Learning how to reverse the changes we have made in the way Mesquite grows and how to take advantage of what it has to offer is one of the great ecological challenges facing us today.

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Mesquites are so common in West Texas we may, perhaps be forgiven for failing to appreciate them. But they are, indeed, remarkable. The Pima Indians knew the tree as the "Tree of Life." Interestingly, the people of Bahrain still describe one Mesquite tree that way. It is over 400 years old and lives near the...

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(Also from Brewer) "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God" (Matt. xix. 24). In the Koran we find a similar expression: "The impious shall find the gates of heaven shut; nor shall he enter till a camel shall pass through the eye of a needle."

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The Sahara is the world's largest hot desert and one of the harshest environments on the planet. It is third largest desert overall after Antarctica and the Arctic, which are cold deserts.

At 3.6 million square miles (9.4 million square kilometers), the Sahara, which is Arabic for "The Great Desert," engulfs most of North Africa. The desert covers large sections of Algeria, Chad, Egypt, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Western Sahara, Sudan and Tunisia.

This is the image many people have of the Sahara: a vast sea of sand dunes. The terrain is actually quite varied.

Credit: apdesign ShutterStock

The Sahara is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean on the western edge, the Atlas Mountains and the Mediterranean Sea to the north, the Red Sea on the east, and the Sudan and the valley of the Niger River on the south. The Sahara is divided into 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, which is the most arid region.

In the north, the Sahara reaches to the Mediterranean Sea in Egypt and portions of Libya. In Cyrenaica and the Maghreb, the Sahara experiences a more Mediterranean climate with a winter rainy season.

Major cities located in the Sahara include Cairo, Egypt; Tripoli, Libya; Nouakchott, the capital of Mauritania; Tamanrasset, Ouargla, Bechar, Hassi Messaoud, Ghardaia, and El Oued in Algeria; Timbuktu in Mali; Agadez in Niger; and Faya-Largeau in Chad.

Climate and geography of the Sahara

The Sahara's northeasterly winds can reach hurricane level and often give rise to sand storms and dust devils. Half of the Sahara receives less than an inch of rain per year, and the rest receives up to 4 inches (10 centimeters) per year. The infrequent rain is usually torrential.

The highest peak in the Sahara is the volcano Emi Koussi (11,204 feet or 3,415 meters) in the Tibesti Mountains in northern Chad. The desert's other mountains and mountain ranges include the Aïr Mountains, Hoggar (Ahaggar) Mountains, Saharan Atlas, Tibesti Mountains, Adrar des Iforas and the Red Sea hills.

The Hoggar Mountains in Algeria are in the central Sahara.

Credit: Pichugin Dmitry ShutterStock

Many people imagine the Sahara as dotted with sand dunes, and the desert does have its share of ergs, which are large areas of shifting sand dunes, with some of some of them reaching 590 feet (180 meters). However, most of the Sahara is characterized as rocky hamada, a type of desert landscape that has very little sand and is made up of primarily barren, hard, rocky plateaus.

With the exception of the Nile River, the Sahara's rivers and streams are irregular or seasonal. The Nile crosses the desert from its origins in central Africa to empty into the Mediterranean.

The central part of the Sahara has extremely limited vegetation. The northern and southern reaches of the desert, along with the highlands, have areas of sparse grassland and desert shrub, with trees and taller shrubs.

The Addax nasomaculatus, also known as the screwhorn antelope, is the Sahara's largest indigenous mammal

Credit: S1001 ShutterStock

Animals of the Sahara

Thousands of years ago, the Sahara had enough water so that people and animals were able to survive on the edge of the desert. There is evidence that the area was able to sustain river animals such as crocodiles. Fossils of dinosaurs, including Afrovenator, Jobaria and Ouranosaurus, have also been discovered in the desert.

Prehistoric rock paintings also depict cattle, giraffes, elephants and lions that roamed a once-lush Sahara.

Today, there is little water or vegetation to sustain life in most part of the Sahara. Some exceptions include the Nile Valley, a few oases, and the northern highlands, where Mediterranean plants such as the olive tree are found to grow. The change occurred in about 1600 B.C., after shifts in the Earth's axis increased temperatures and decreased precipitation.

Camels, most often associated with the Sahara, were introduced to the desert around 200 A.D. Their advantages over the horses they replaced include soft feet that are aligned so that they can move quickly and easily through sand and their ability to go for up to 17 days without food or water.

The venomous deathstalker scorpion can be 4 inches in length.

Credit: Ester Inbar

Rodents, snakes and scorpions thrive in the desert environment. The desert is home to the deathstalker scorpion, which can be nearly 4 inches (10 cm) in length. Its dangerous venom contains large amounts of agitoxin and scyllatoxin.

Among the 40-plus species of rodents in the Sahara is the jerboa, related to the mouse, rat and squirrel. To keep cool, the jerboa burrows underneath the desert's sands to more humid soils.

The Addax nasomaculatus, also known as the screwhorn antelope, is the Sahara's largest indigenous mammal. It travels in small herds throughout the Western Sahara, Mauritania and Chad. Instead of drinking water, it sucks moisture from the desert grasses and bushes. Its oversized hooves make the addax adept at moving through the Sahara's loose sand.

Jackals and several types of hyenas are among the carnivores that roam the Sahara. Weighing less than 3 pounds (1.4 kg), the Mall Fennec Fox is another carnivore that makes its home in tunnels in the sand dunes during the day and comes out at night to prey on the rodents.

- Kim Ann Zimmermann

Related:

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The Sahara: Facts, Climate and Animals of the Desert

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The Sahara is the world's largest hot desert and one of the harshest environments on the planet. It is third largest desert overall after Antarctica and the Arctic, which are cold deserts. At 3.6 million square miles (9.4 million square kilometers), the Sahara, which is Arabic for "The Great Desert," engulfs most of North Africa.

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Did you know that out of all of  the deserts like North America,South America,Asia,and Australia the Sahara desert is the largest?The Sahara desert has 3.5 million miles and 5630 kilometers.