IELTS Listening Part 4: How Desert Animals Survive Without Water

Part Four. You will hear a lecture about how desert animals survive.

You have some time to look at questions thirty-one to forty.

Now listen carefully and answer questions thirty-one to forty.

Good morning, everyone. Today we're heading somewhere very hot.

How can an animal live for weeks without a single drink?

Well, let's begin with the most famous example, the camel.

Many people think the hump is full of water.

In fact, it's mostly fat, which the camel uses for energy.

And when it does find water, it can drink a hundred litres in ten minutes!

Now, smaller animals have a different problem.

They lose heat and water very quickly through their skin.

The kangaroo rat is my favourite answer to this!

It never drinks at all, and gets water from dry seeds.

During the day, it stays in a cool burrow under the sand.

But perhaps the cleverest trick belongs to a tiny beetle!

It lives in the Namib Desert, near the Atlantic coast.

On foggy mornings, it climbs to the top of a dune,

and points its back into the wind.

Tiny drops collect on its back and run straight into its mouth!

So, what about animals that hunt?

Most of them simply avoid the heat by hunting at night.

Take the fennec fox, with its enormous ears.

Those ears help it hear insects moving under the sand.

They also release heat from its body, a bit like a radiator.

Sadly, these clever animals now face a serious problem.

Deserts are getting hotter, and towns are using more groundwater.

Some small waterholes have already disappeared completely.

So, protecting these waterholes must be our first priority.

Next week, we'll look at animals in the Arctic instead.

Don't worry, it'll be a lot cooler!

That is the end of Part Four.