What other mammals can live in the desert like desert cats?

Some small animals in the desert have the physiological characteristics of drought tolerance. They don't need to drink water, they can get water directly from plants and rely on special metabolism to get the water they need. They have a series of physiological-ecological adaptation mechanisms in reducing water consumption. They live in caves to protect themselves from all kinds of violations; In the cave, you can avoid the enemy, avoid the heat and hibernate without eating.

Some rodents live a burrowing life, typically jerboa, and the most common are three-toed jerboa and five-toed jerboa. They like to live by digging holes in sand dunes, so they are also called "jumping sand". The body length is about 130 ~ 140mm, and * * is characterized by long hind legs and hard hair pads on the soles of the feet, which are suitable for fast jumping on the sand, and can also jump to 60 ~ 180cm on the sand.

The forelimbs are small, only used for foraging and digging, not for running. Tails are generally very long. Some species of jerboa have flat long hair bundles at the tail end, just like a "rudder", which can balance the body and grasp the direction in jumping. Their heads are very similar to rabbits, with long ears, big tympanic vesicles (good for hearing) and big eyes. These characteristics enable them to jump long distances at night smoothly.

Because there are few plants in the desert and most of them are thorny shrubs, in this environment, jerboa mainly feeds on plant seeds and insects. Due to the restriction of food conditions, the jerboa camp does not live in groups and comes out for long-distance foraging at night. Sometimes you can run and jump 10 km in one night. At night, among the shrubs and semi-shrubs in the sand dunes, it is easy to find the frequent activities of jerboa. Its bright eyes are watching you or jumping quickly in front of you, which makes people feel that the Gobi Desert in the sand dunes is indeed a paradise for jerboa.

In the long winter, they spend their sleep in hibernation Jerboa is a special biological form of animal produced by desert landscape, which can be compared with camel.

As a representative rodent of desert cave animals, there are many kinds of gerbils: Meriones meridionalis, Meriones unguiculatus, Meriones tamarisk, Meriones albiflora and so on. They all live in groups and are active all year round, but their activities weaken in winter and they live by storing feed.

Gerbils have a body length of over 150 mm and short ears, which are not half as long as their hind feet. The hind paws are hairy and the tail is thick, almost close to the body length. Mainly living in desert and semi-desert areas of Xinjiang, Gansu and Inner Mongolia, shrubs are clustered in sand dunes and sandy land and feed on trivial and juicy leaves; It has amazing ability to build caves, caves are often connected into one, and tunnels are densely covered, which can run through the whole sand dune and the ground.

Meriones unguiculatus and Meriones meridionalis are widely distributed, and they are also common in the sandy land of grassland.

Most of the above rodents are sandy yellow, which is convenient for hiding in the desert. Even if they are active at night, their body color is the same as the background. Because of the lack of water resources, they all rely on the juice in plants to maintain water metabolism.