Animals in the Colorado Desert
- Despite the harsh conditions, many animals thrive in the desert.desert image by Carol Tomalty from Fotolia.com
The Colorado Desert includes some 7 million acres within the much larger Sonoran Desert in southeastern California. According to the California Department of Fish and Game, the climate of this desert region has hotter summertime temperatures during the day than most of America's other deserts. Frost rarely occurs here and the area has two separate rainy seasons, one in the winter and another in the latter part of summer. Various animal species exist in the Colorado Desert, despite the climate. - The range of the kit fox includes the Colorado Desert, where this canine will avoid the tremendous daytime heat by staying in its cooler burrow during the daylight hours. This nocturnal hunter will come out at sundown and pursue such prey as rabbits, ground squirrels, mice, rats, birds and other small game. Also called a swift fox, the kit fox can run for a short distance as rapidly as 25 miles an hour. The kit fox has the ability to get much of its water needs from the prey it hunts. The "National Audubon Society Field Guide to Mammals" says the kit fox will typically take over the burrow of a badger or dig its own home with as many as three or four entrances and exits. This fox must avoid coyotes, its main predator in a desert ecosystem. It makes a shrill yapping sound along with such noises as whining and purrs.
- The American badger is a resident of the Colorado Desert and adapts to the region, using its digging skills to make a deep and elaborate burrow to stay cool and hunting at night. The badger, part of the Weasel family, has powerful and sharp claws that allow it to dig out the mice, rabbits, gophers and ground squirrels upon which it mainly feeds. The badger is as long as 30 inches, says The Living Desert website, and can weigh in the range of 15 to 25 lbs. The mammal possesses a white stripe that runs across its back from the tip of its nose to its rump, with a face featuring black patches and round ears. Coyotes will sometimes watch a badger digging for an animal in its burrow and grab the hapless prey when it tries to escape out of a side exit to its den. Badgers can eat rattlesnakes in their desert ecosystem and their own dens often have rattlesnake rattles lying about, along with the bones of its other meals.
- The black-tailed jackrabbit is the most plentiful jackrabbit in North America, and its range, which extends across most of the American West, overlaps into the Colorado Desert. The black-tailed jackrabbit survives in the heat with the help of its large ears, which serve to let extra body heat evaporate into the surrounding air. The jackrabbit is not really a rabbit, but rather a hare, because it does not build a nest for its young, which have their eyes wide open when born, along with a good supply of fur. The black-tailed jackrabbit stays in the shade during the day and forages about at night for vegetation. Its defenses include incredible hearing and 35- to 40-mile-per-hour speed. The predators of this species are mammals like the bobcat, coyote and fox and raptors like the owl, eagle and hawk.
