142 ANIMAL LIFE IN DESERTS 



bees, flies, grasshoppers, and wasps ; in many lizards, 

 and snakes ; in many birds of many different 

 families, larks, finches, warblers, owls, partridges, 

 nightjars, waders, and others ; in many mammals of 

 many groups, rodents and insectivores, and bats 

 and ungulates and marsupials. In fact, I cannot 

 quote a single group of animals which lives in the 

 desert and which does not furnish examples of this 

 general truth. The only apparent exceptions are 

 to be found in certain groups of beetles and other 

 small Arthropods which Hve their whole Hfe below 

 the surface of the ground. 



This type of colour and of pattern which we have 

 come to recognize as characteristic of the fauna 

 of deserts is not only widely distributed in the animal 

 kingdom, but widely spread over the world. In 

 any desert, in any of the five continents, you will 

 find these sandy or buff birds and mammals and 

 insects, and you wiU not find them in numbers in 

 any environment which is not desert or semi-desert. 



Further, it may be stated that desert-dwelling 

 animals are not coloured isabelline, or reddish buff, 

 or greyish, indiscriminately ; for there is often a 

 very close similarity in colour between the creature 

 and the soil of the particular type of desert on which 

 it lives. Thus, Lucas and Frost, in discussing the 

 lizards collected by the Horn Expedition in Central 

 Austraha, refer to the " presumably protective colora- 

 tion of the species of diurnal habits. Many of these 

 exhibit a very marked general rustiness, or even 

 bright redness, in their general colouring, which is 

 quite wanting in the forms met with in the South 



