The adaptation of animals in the desert
Introduction
Desert animals survival. Desert animal adaptations. Lack of water creates a survival problem for all desert organisms, both animals and plants. But animals have an additional problem: they are more susceptible to extreme temperatures than plants. Animals receive heat directly by sun’s radiation, and indirectly, by conducting the substrate (rocks and soil) and air convection. The biological processes of animal tissue can only work within a relatively narrow temperature range.
Developing
When this range is exceeded, the animal dies. For four or five months of the year, the daily temperatures in the desert can exceed this range, called thermos of thermos neutrality. Combined with the shortage of water for life, the survival of desert animals can become extremely fragile. Fortunately, most desert animals have developed both behavioral and physiological mechanisms to solve heat and water problems that create the desert environment.
Among the thousands of animal species of the desert, there are almost the same amount of structural and behavior adaptations developed to avoid excess heat. Equally ingenious are the various mechanisms that have developed various animal species to acquire, conserve, recycle and, in fact, make water. Behavioral techniques to avoid excess heat are numerous among desert animals. Certain species of birds, such as the Phainopepla, a black, thin and bright bird with a thin crest.
They reproduce during relatively cold spring and then leave the desert to colder areas in higher elevations, or along the Pacific coast. The hummingbird of the coast, a desert species of crown and purganta, begins to reproduce at the end of winter and then leaves at the end of spring when temperatures become extreme. Many birds are mainly active at dawn and a few hours after sunset, and retire to a fresh and shaded place for the rest of the day.
Some birds, such as the king bird, continue their activity throughout the day, but always perch in the shadow. Many animals (especially mammals and reptiles) are twilight, that is, they are active only at dusk and again at dawn. For this reason, humans are rarely found in a rattlesnakes and Gila monsters. Many animals are completely nocturnal, restricting all their activities to the coolest temperatures of the night. The bats, many snakes.
Most rodents and some larger mammals such as foxes and skunks, are nocturnal, sleep in a fresh burrow or burrow during the day during the day. Some smaller animals in the desert hide below the soil or sand surface to escape high temperatures on the desert surface. These include many mammals, reptiles, insects and all desert amphibians. Rodents can cover the entrances of their burrows to avoid the entry of hot and desiccant air.
Some desert animals, such as the squirrel of round cola. The hottest part of the summer sleep. (Also hibernate in winter to avoid the cold station). Some desert animals, such as desert toads, remain asleep in soil depths until summer rains fill the ponds. Then they emerge, reproduce, put eggs and replenish their body and water bodily reserves for another long period.
Some arthropods, such as fairy shrimp and brine shrimp, survive like eggs, hatch in saline and beaches during summer or winter rains and complete their life cycles. Certain desert lizards are active during the warmest stations, but they move extremely fast on hot surfaces, stopping in ‘islands’ of colder colder. Even your legs can be longer, so they absorb less superficial heat while running.
Some animals dissipate the heat absorbed from their environment through several mechanisms. Owls, wicked and nocturnal hawks are speechless while quickly shaking the throat region to evaporate the water of mouth cavities. (However, only animals with a good water supply of the dams can afford this type of cooling). Many desert mammals have developed long appendices to dissipate body heat in their surroundings. The huge ears of the hares.
With their numerous blood vessels, they release heat when the animal rests in a cool and shaded place. Your relatives in colder regions have much shorter ears. New World vultures, such as turkey and black vultures, are dark and, therefore, absorb considerable heat in the desert. But they excrete urine in the legs, cool them by evaporation and circulate the cooled blood back through the body. This behavior, called urohidrosis, shares it with their relatives the storks, successful birds of the African deserts.
Both vultures and storks can escape the warm noon temperatures of the desert flying effortless. Many desert animals are pale than their relatives in other places in more moderate environments. You can see pale colors in feathers, fur, scales or skin. Pale colors not only ensure that the animal absorbs less heat than the environment, but also help to be less visible to predators in a bright and pale environment.
The mechanisms that some desert animals have developed to retain water are even more elaborate. They range from simple to physiologically complex. Some retain water by digging on the wet ground during the dry hours of the day (all desert toads). Some predatory animals and scavengers can obtain all their humidity needs from the food they eat, but they can still drink when there is water available. Reptiles and birds excrete metabolic waste in the form of uric acid.
An insoluble white compound, which waste very little water in the process. Mammals, however, excrete urea, a soluble compound that represents considerable loss of water. Most mammals, therefore, need access to a good fresh water supply, at least a few days, if not every day. Desert creatures obtain water directly from plants, particularly succulents, such as cactus. Many species of insects thrive in deserts in this way.
Some insects extract the fluids from plants such as nectar or sap from stems, while others extract water from the parts of the plants they eat, such as leaves and fruits. The abundance of insects allows birds, bats and insectivorous lizards to prosper in the desert. Some desert creatures use all these physical and behavior mechanisms to survive the ends of heat and dryness. Certain desert mammals, such as kangaroo rats, live in underground hairs that seal to block the heat of noon and recycle the humidity of their own breathing.
conclusion
These ingenious rodents (there are several species) also have specialized kidneys with extra microscopic tubules to extract most of the urine water and return it to the bloodstream. And much of the moisture that would be exhaled when breathing is recovered in the nasal cavities by specialized organs. If this were not enough, the kangaroo rats, and some other rodents of the desert, in reality the manufacture of their metabolic water from the digestion of drying these highly specialized desert mammals will not drink water even when they are given in captivity!
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