DESERT GARDEN WORD PICTURE
Imagine windswept sand dunes and towering rocks in a dry and dramatic landscape. Our picture shows a sandy, orange desert floor, tall green cacti and a bright blue, cloudless sky. This is the Desert Garden, the driest garden you will visit on our journey around the world. There are many deserts on the planet. Deserts can be hot, like the Sahara in Africa, or cold, like the Siberian desert in Russia. The one thing all deserts have in common is that they have hardly any water. Years can go by in a desert with no rain. A lizard suns himself on a rock in our Desert Garden. Lizards are reptiles. There are over 4000 species of lizard. These species are all very different, depending upon their home, or habitat. Lizards have dry, scaly skin. Some can climb trees, others can swim. Some lizards look like snakes and slither along the ground but most lizards have four legs. Geckos are the only lizards that have a voice. They can make clicking or squealing sounds. The biggest lizards are called Komodo dragons. They can grow up to 3 metres long. Also relaxing in the Desert Garden is a rattlesnake. Rattlesnakes are reptiles. They are poisonous and like to eat mice, rats, frogs, lizards and other small animals. Rattlesnakes hunt at night by sensing the heat from their prey. They can see a ‘heat image’ of an animal several metres away. The famous rattle is a row of rings made from horny material at the tip of the snake’s tail. The snake shakes its tail to rattle the rings if it is feeling threatened. A group of meerkats is called a mob. A mob of seven meerkats pops their heads up over a sand dune in the Desert Garden. If a mob of meerkats is sleeping or eating one of them always keeps watch for predators. Many people live in deserts. In the Desert Garden a drum has been left behind. Some people in native desert tribes make drums from animal skins. They use drumbeats to send messages to each other as well as to make music. Water is very rare and precious in the desert. When there is a shower, beautiful flowers can bloom very quickly. Seeds can lie buried in the ground for many years, waiting for rain. Life is difficult with very little water. The deserts of the world are full of wildlife that survives on very little water, like desert foxes and camels and the creatures in our Desert Garden. It takes all sorts of gardens to make a world and they all need looking after. |
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