Addax are desert antelopes from North Africa. They have pale coats, long spiral horns, and broad hooves that help them walk on sand. These tough animals are built for dry places, but they need protection because they are very rare in the wild.

Armadillos are unusual mammals with tough armor, strong digging claws, pointed snouts, and a powerful sense of smell. Their name means “little armored one,” which fits them perfectly.

The Bactrian camel is a large domesticated camel from Central Asia with two humps, a thick winter coat, and broad feet for travelling across cold deserts and dry steppes. Its scientific name is Camelus bactrianus. It is different from both the one-humped dromedary and the Critically Endangered wild camel, Camelus ferus, which is a separate species.

Bearded dragons are spiky-looking lizards from Australia. They are famous for puffing out a throat pouch that looks like a beard, basking in warm sunlight, and using body signals such as head bobbing and arm waving.

The bighorn sheep is a wild North American sheep famous for the massive curling horns of adult males. Its scientific name is Ovis canadensis. Different populations live in the Rocky Mountains, Sierra Nevada, and dry desert ranges of the western United States, Canada, and northern Mexico. Sure-footed hooves and powerful legs help bighorns escape predators across steep cliffs and broken rock.

Bilbies are small Australian marsupials with very long ears, silky fur, pointed snouts, and strong digging claws. They live in dry habitats, come out mostly at night, and use burrows to stay safe from heat and danger.

Camels are desert-ready mammals famous for their humps, long eyelashes, wide feet, and amazing ability to survive in dry places. They have helped people travel, carry goods, and live in harsh desert regions for thousands of years.

Caracals are sleek wild cats with reddish-brown fur, short tails, long legs, and dramatic black ear tufts. They live in dry places, grasslands, hills, and scrub areas across Africa and parts of Asia.

The chinkara, Gazella bennettii, is a small gazelle of dry landscapes from Iran and Afghanistan through Pakistan to India. It is also called the Indian gazelle. A sandy coat, dark-and-white facial stripes, slim legs, and ringed horns help identify it, while flexible feeding and an ability to obtain much of its moisture from plants allow it to survive deserts, scrub, rocky hills, and open dry woodland. Chinkara are often solitary or found in small groups rather than huge herds.

Coyotes are clever wild members of the dog family. They are known for howling, quick running, sharp senses, and their amazing ability to live in deserts, forests, grasslands, farms, and even cities.

The dromedary, Camelus dromedarius, is the one-humped camel of North Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia. It has been domesticated for thousands of years for transport, milk, meat, fibre, and work. No truly wild dromedary population survives, although large feral herds live in Australia. Dromedaries are superbly adapted to hot, dry landscapes with fat stored in one hump, broad padded feet, closable nostrils, long eyelashes, tough lips, and remarkable control of heat and water loss.

Emperor scorpions are large black scorpions from western Africa. They have big pincers, a curved tail with a stinger, eight legs, and a quiet nighttime life in warm forests and savannas.

Fennec foxes are tiny desert foxes with huge ears, sandy fur, fluffy tails, and quick little feet. They live in deserts of northern Africa and nearby regions, where their ears help them hear prey and release heat.

Fox is a common name for several small to medium-sized members of the dog family, Canidae. The best-known true foxes belong to the genus Vulpes and include Red, Arctic, Fennec, Swift, Kit, Bengal, Corsac, and Tibetan foxes. Other fox-named canids include gray foxes, bat-eared foxes, and South American foxes from separate evolutionary branches. Foxes inhabit tundra, deserts, mountains, forests, grasslands, farms, cities, and islands, using sharp senses, flexible diets, and remarkable behavior to survive.

Gerbils are small rodents that live in deserts, grasslands, and dry regions. They are known for long tails, strong back legs, burrowing skills, and social behavior with family groups.

Gerenuks are slim, long-necked antelopes from dry parts of East Africa. They are sometimes called giraffe gazelles because they can stand on their hind legs and stretch upward to nibble leaves.

Gila monsters are colorful venomous lizards from the southwestern United States and northern Mexico. They are slow-moving reptiles with beadlike scales, black and pink or orange patterns, strong jaws, and fat-storing tails.

Horned lizards are small, flat, spiky reptiles from North and Central America. They are sometimes called horned toads, but they are lizards, not toads, and many are famous for eating ants, hiding in desert colors, and using strange defense tricks.

Iguanas are large lizards with long tails, scaly skin, strong claws, and spiky crests. Many iguanas live in warm places, climb trees, bask in sunlight, and eat mostly leaves, flowers, and fruit.

Jerboas are small jumping rodents with long hind legs, short front legs, long tails, and big eyes. They live in deserts and dry grasslands of northern Africa, Asia, and parts of eastern Europe.

Kangaroo rats are small nocturnal rodents in the genus Dipodomys. More than 20 living species occur only in western North America, from southern Canada through the western United States into Mexico. They are not true rats in the family Muridae and are not related closely to Australian kangaroos. Their enormous hind legs, tiny front feet, long balancing tails, external fur-lined cheek pouches, seed-storing behavior, and remarkable water-saving physiology suit life in deserts, shrublands, sandy grasslands, and dry open country.

Meerkats are small, social mammals that live in dry deserts and grasslands in southern Africa. They are famous for standing upright, living in busy groups, digging burrows, and taking turns watching for danger.

The mule deer is a large-eared deer native to western North America. Its scientific name is Odocoileus hemionus. It is named for ears that reminded people of a mule, but this wild deer is not related to the horse–donkey hybrid beyond both being mammals with conspicuous ears.

The mulga snake is a large, powerfully built venomous snake found across most of Australia. Its scientific name is Pseudechis australis. It is often called the king brown snake, but that name is misleading: it belongs to Australia's black-snake genus, not the true brown-snake genus.

Oryxes are large antelopes with long horns, pale coats, and bold face markings. They live in dry deserts and near-deserts, where their bodies are adapted to heat, scarce water, and open spaces.

Peccaries are piglike mammals from the Americas. They may look like wild pigs, but they belong to their own family. Many live in herds, use scent to communicate, and search for roots, fruit, seeds, cactus, and small foods.

Rattlesnakes are venomous snakes from the Americas, famous for the rattle at the end of the tail. They use camouflage, heat-sensing pits, fangs, and warning rattles to survive in deserts, grasslands, forests, and rocky places.

The red kangaroo, Osphranter rufus, is the largest living marsupial and Australia’s largest native land mammal. It roams open country across much of the dry interior. Adult males are usually rusty red, while females are often blue-gray or brown, although color varies. Enormous hind feet, springy legs, and a muscular tail make this grazing mammal superbly suited to long journeys between scattered food and water.

Roadrunners are fast ground-living cuckoo birds from deserts and dry habitats of the southwestern United States and Mexico. They can fly, but they usually prefer running on strong legs while hunting small animals.

Scorpions are predatory arachnids recognized by their grasping pincers and segmented tails tipped with venomous stingers. More than 2,500 species live in deserts, forests, grasslands, caves, mountains, and human-altered habitats across every continent except Antarctica. Most avoid people and hunt at night by detecting tiny vibrations, but all wild scorpions should be left untouched.

Skinks are lizards in the enormous family Scincidae, which contains more than 1,500 living species. Many have shiny overlapping scales, long cylindrical bodies, small legs, and a barely visible neck, but the family also includes sturdy blue-tongued skinks, spiny crocodile skinks, burrowers with reduced limbs, and completely legless species.

Thorny devils are small spiky lizards from dry parts of Australia. They look fierce with thorny bodies and a pretend head, but they are slow, harmless reptiles that mostly eat ants.