Why do many desert animals come out at night?

Have you ever walked barefoot on sand on a sunny day? Ouch, it can feel hot enough to make you hop! Now picture a whole land of sand like that, stretching far away.

That land is a desert, and lots of animals live there. Yet if you visited at lunchtime, you would see hardly anyone. So why do so many desert animals wait until night to come out?

In the desert, the sun shines strong all day long. There are few clouds to cover it and few trees to give shade. So the sun beats down on the sand and heats it until it is hot enough to burn tiny paws.

A small animal out in that heat warms up fast. Its body has nowhere cool to rest, so it gets too hot, the way you feel after running hard on a summer day. Staying too hot for too long can make an animal very sick.

Heat brings a second problem, and it is about water. A hot body cools itself by letting out water, the way a dog pants with its tongue out. In the desert, rain is rare and puddles are hard to find, so each drop an animal loses is hard to get back.

So during the day, many desert animals hide in a burrow, which means a hole they dig under the ground. Down there the soil stays cool and a little damp, away from the blazing sun. The animals rest and wait. What do you think happens to all that hot sand when the sun goes down?

When the sun sets, the sand loses its heat quickly. The desert sky has almost no clouds, and clouds act like a blanket that holds warmth in. Without that blanket, the warmth slips up and away, and the night air turns cool.

Now the animals come out of hiding. We call animals like these nocturnal, which means awake and busy at night. In the cool dark, nocturnal animals can run, hunt and look for food without getting too hot or drying out.

Think of a little kangaroo rat. All day it naps in its burrow, snug and cool. At night this nocturnal hopper bounces across the sand, stuffing seeds into its cheeks, and then hurries back to its burrow before the sun comes up.

Our two new words are burrow and nocturnal. The hot desert sun would make small animals too hot and dry them out, so they rest in a burrow by day and come out as nocturnal animals in the cool night.

Next time you see the moon rise, picture the little desert animals waking up under it while you snuggle down to sleep.