Journey Across the Land

If you were to take a trip to Northern Africa today, you could visit ten different countries while exploring the same place. How could something like that be possible? The answer to this riddle is the Sahara Desert! As far as your eyes could see, you would be staring at an enormous waving sea … but this sea isn't filled with water, it's filled with sand.

Welcome to the Sahara, the largest hot desert in the world. The word “Sahara” comes from the Arabic word for “desert”
and represents a land of dryness, heat, and sand that spans thousands of miles. The Sahara may be the largest hot desert on Earth, making it a harsh place to live, but it also contains more life than you would expect. The Sahara has its own unique ecosystem, where many kinds of plants, animals, insects, and humans interact in the same environment.

The plants of the Sahara are a big part of the ecosystem of North Africa, often providing food, shelter, and even water to the environment. The doum palm is a type of tree and a great example of how plants work in the Sahara Desert’s ecosystem. It provides fruit and stores water that can be consumed by animals and humans. The tree’s massive leaves provide much-needed shade from the sun. Rare olive trees can also be found in the Sahara. The olive fruit is used for olive oil, one of the main cooking ingredients for different cultures around the world.

Your exploration of the Sahara Desert would, of course, put you up close and personal with some of the fastest, most unique, and even dangerous creatures in the world. The Sahara is home to all sorts of animals, including some of the quickest, such as the ostrich and the African cheetah, the fastest land animal in the world.

Some of the creatures who roam these desert lands have even interacted with humans for hundreds of years—sometimes as friends, sometimes as foes. The camel is one of the most famous of these friendly desert wanderers. This animal has a long history of being a travel companion to the Arab peoples who traveled from the Middle East to Africa hundreds of years ago in hopes of exploration and trade.

Finally, your trip to the Sahara would not be complete without an exercise in caution. As you gaze at the elegant ostrich taking shade under a palm, the blinding fast cheetah zipping across, or even the friendly camel standing by, beware of the tiny creatures that lurk just below you. The African Sahara is also the home of the desert scorpion, a highly poisonous arachnid whose sting can inject toxic venom. Scorpions that crawl through the sands of the Sahara Desert have been known to be so dangerous, and at times, so stealthy, that some even carry the nickname “Deathstalker.”

Before you return home, a final surprise lies within Africa. Although the Sahara may be one of the most famous of Africa’s ecosystems, it is far from the only one! Africa is an extremely large and wonderfully diverse continent. The lands of Africa are also famous for their various forests and lagoons. West African forests cover large stretches of land in places like Guinea and Cameroon. Africa’s lagoons are also mostly found alongside the West African coast. The ecosystem of a lagoon is completely different from that of the Sahara Desert.

The lagoon is mostly a wet environment located close to the ocean, alongside the coastal regions. The lagoons of West Africa have their own distinct plants and animals which all live and interact in the same environment to maintain their unique ecosystem. One of the most important of these living organisms are the mangroves, large plants with even larger roots that stay hidden below the water. Mangroves are a large habitat, or home, for hundreds of birds and fish in West Africa, and they provide wood for different uses around the world, from building chairs to building homes!

In Africa, a tiny creature that has fascinated humans since the earliest days of civilization can be found roaming the desert at night. The African dung beetle plays a sort of “cleanup” role in the ecosystems of Africa. It uses the excrement of animals for its own food. The dung beetle goes through one of the most unique preparation processes in the animal kingdom: it rolls the dung it ﬁnds into a ball by pushing it in a straight line. The dung beetle is also nocturnal (active at night). How is this tiny insect capable of moving in a straight line when its environment is almost pitch-black? It uses the moon and stars to direct itself! If you think the dung beetle is fascinating, you’re not alone. The ancient Egyptians thought that some dung beetles, which they called scarabs, were sacred symbols. Images of scarabs can be found in ancient Egyptian art.