Meerkat
Suricata suricatta
- Size
- About 30cm tall when standing up
- Look for it
- All year round
- Where
- The Kalahari and other dry country in southern Africa
A small, slender mongoose with dark eye patches and a banded back, living in busy family groups.
The meerkat that follows you
This page is an African desert. Move your pointer across the sand and your animal will scurry, stride, trot or wind after you. Choose a different animal at the bottom, and tap the notes to open them.
The Sahara right now checking the sky…
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01 · GuardSentry duty
While the group feeds, one meerkat stands on a high spot and watches for danger, calling to say all is well.
02 · FamilyA mob
A group of meerkats is called a mob or a gang, and can have forty members.
03 · EyesBuilt-in sunglasses
The dark patches round their eyes cut down the glare of the sun, like sunglasses.
04 · FoodScorpion eaters
Meerkats eat scorpions, and adults teach the pups how to handle them safely.
05 · WarmingSunbathing
Each morning they stand facing the sun to warm up, using a patch of dark skin on the belly.
06 · HomeUnderground towns
They live in burrows with many entrances and rooms, and move between several of them.
Meet them all
Who's who in the desert
Dromedary camel
Camelus dromedarius
- Size
- About 2m at the shoulder
- Look for it
- All year round
- Where
- The Sahara and the Horn of Africa, where it is kept by people
The one-humped camel of North Africa: tall, sandy and long-legged, built for heat and thirst.
Fennec fox
Vulpes zerda
- Size
- Body about 40cm, with ears 15cm long
- Look for it
- All year round
- Where
- Sandy deserts of the Sahara and North Africa
The smallest fox in the world, cream-coloured, with enormous ears and a bushy black-tipped tail.
Common ostrich
Struthio camelus
- Size
- Up to 2.7m tall: the biggest bird alive
- Look for it
- All year round
- Where
- Dry plains, semi-desert and savanna across Africa
The largest bird in the world. It cannot fly, but it can outrun almost anything. The male is black and white.
Desert scorpion
Scorpiones
- Size
- Mostly 5 to 12cm long
- Look for it
- All year round
- Where
- Deserts and dry country across Africa
An eight-legged relative of spiders, with a pair of pincers in front and a curved tail ending in a sting.
Saharan horned viper
Cerastes cerastes
- Size
- About 50 to 60cm long
- Look for it
- All year round
- Where
- Sandy deserts across the Sahara
A sand-coloured desert snake, usually with a small horn above each eye.
Through the year
When to look for them
Desert animals are about all year, but mostly at dawn, dusk and night, when it is cool. The animal following you is shown in red.
Meerkat
Camel
Fennec fox
Ostrich
Scorpion
Horned viper
Good to know
Six things about the desert
What makes a desert
A desert is anywhere that gets very little rain: less than 25 centimetres in a year. Not all deserts are hot, and not all are sandy.
The Sahara
The Sahara is the largest hot desert in the world, about the size of the United States.
Hot days, cold nights
With no cloud to hold the warmth, a desert that reaches 45 degrees by day can fall close to freezing at night.
Life underground
Most desert animals spend the day in burrows, where it is cool and damp, and come out when the sun goes down.
Getting by without a drink
Many desert animals never drink. They get all their water from their food.
Reading the sand
Every animal that crosses the sand leaves a trail, until the wind wipes it clean.
Photo gallery
Real photos of the animals on this page. Tap one to see it bigger.
Meerkat
Dromedary camel
Fennec fox
Common ostrich
Desert scorpion
Saharan horned viper
Photos are from Wikimedia Commons and are used under free licences. They have been resized, and cropped where they appear in link previews. Open a photo to see who took it.
More alive than it looks
A desert seems empty at midday. Come back at dusk and the sand is covered in tracks. Africa has two great deserts: the Sahara in the north, and the Kalahari and Namib in the south.
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