15 Coolest Desert Animals, Ranked by Toughness

Desert animals, even the tiny ones, have unique adaptations to help them handle the heat. But which one is the toughest?

How long would you last in the desert? Without air conditioning, we’d avoid it at all costs. In the woods, at least you can build a shelter and start a fire to stay warm. In the desert, what are you going to build a house with? Cacti and sand? We wouldn’t last long, but desert animals make it look easy.

We ranked these crazy critters from least tough to toughest, based on their hardiness and scare factor. Even the least intimidating of the bunch has us beat.

15. Jerboa

Jerboa in the desert area of Turkestan Kazakhstan

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Hardiness score: 5

Scariness score: 1

Get up. No, really. Get out of your chair, and go into the middle of the room. Now jump as high as you can. If you jumped over a few feet, that’s impressive, but a couple of feet is still only about 30 percent of the average adult’s height. Jerboas, on the other hand, are only about 3 inches tall, and they can jump about 6 feet high. That’s 2,400 percent of their own height. That’s the equivalent of a man jumping 144 feet in the air and landing like it’s a breeze. Tigger would be jealous.

Jerboas are tiny, non-threatening and not particularly suited for self-defense, but they confuse the heck out of predators by hopping sideways like a deranged, big-eared bouncy ball. Plus, they can survive in the heat of the desert better than we can, so we think they’re pretty tough.

14. Antelope Jackrabbit

Erin Donalson / Getty Images

Hardiness score: 6

Scariness score: 1

Antelope jackrabbits aren’t the toughest of the bunch, but they’re far tougher than your standard pet bunny. They’re still susceptible to predators, but they’re much better at evading them than a fluffy Holland lop would be. They can jump up to 10 feet high and hit speeds of 40 miles an hour, hence the antelope reference in their name.

They zigzag across the sand to bewilder their enemies, and they eat any vegetation they can. They don’t even drink water and instead hydrate themselves by drawing water from the food they eat. Wow!

13. Desert Pupfish

Cyprinodon macularius is a rare species of fish in the family Cyprinodontidae and is known by the common name desert pupfish. Listed endangered species in the United States. Presently, the only remaining natural populations of the desert pupfish are locat

Gerald Corsi / Getty Images

Hardiness score: 7

Scariness score: 1

Any creature that needs to live in water to survive isn’t the hardiest, but desert pupfish are pretty stinkin’ hardy for a fish. We didn’t even know fish existed in the desert, but the pupfish proved us wrong. They can tolerate extreme environmental conditions, from freshwater to brackish water, rapidly changing salinity and water temperature, and temps anywhere between 40 and 108 degrees Fahrenheit.

Warm water holds less oxygen, but desert pupfish can deal with that, too. They live in small, slow-moving streams and springs, and they’ll even thrive in puddles if their habitat runs dry.

12. Elf Owl

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Hardiness score: 7

Scariness score: 2

Elf owls can’t hurt you, and we’d call these tough desert creatures creepy rather than scary. If you’re camping in the desert and see a pair of round, glowing eyes in the dark, jumping is an understandable reaction.

In terms of hardiness and desert adaptations, these feathered fluff balls have it covered. They’re tiny, topping out at about 5.5 inches in height. This makes them the smallest owl recorded, and yet they can tough it out along with birds of prey quadruple their size. They fly silently and can catch prey in complete darkness. Plus, they eat scorpions.

11. Roadrunner

jzabloski / Getty Images

Hardiness score: 9

Scariness score: 1

What can run faster than an e-bike, take down a rattlesnake and thrive in a blazingly hot landscape that’s mostly rocks and dust? The roadrunner. These tough desert animals are as aerodynamic as a bird can be, leaning forward to form a straight line as they speed across the sand. They look like tiny dinosaurs, and they can gobble up venomous lizards, snakes and scorpions like they’re pancakes.

They’re also like a walking horror show: If they eat a rattlesnake that’s too long to swallow in one go, they just swallow part of it and let the rest hang out of their beak while the first part of their meal gets digested.

10. Screaming Hairy Armadillo

front on shot of a screaming hairy armadillo

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Hardiness score: 9

Scariness score: 2

Screaming hairy armadillos aren’t very scary, but they’re covered in head-to-toe armor. Essentially, they have bones on the outside. Their armor is made of bony plates with small scales called scutes. It’s as if a hedgehog ditched the prickles and replaced them with snakeskin, only as tough as iron.

Plus, these armadillos rarely need to drink water, and they squeal loudly if they feel threatened. No worries, ‘dillo. We won’t be trying to pick you up any time soon.

9. Desert Ironclad Beetle

Diabolical Ironclad Beetle (Coleoptera; Diabolicus phloeodes)

Heather Broccard-Bell / Getty Images

Hardiness score: 10

Scariness score: 1

Desert ironclad beetles, also known as the blue death feigning beetle, are minuscule. They’re less than an inch long, but they can take on practically any condition. The powdery blue coating covering their bodies traps moisture to help them survive. When it’s humid out, the blue coloration fades.

They’ve become popular pets because of how incredibly hard they are to kill. They’re like the succulents of the bug world. They need sand and something to nosh on. And when we say something, we mean pretty much anything. They’ll eat dead bugs, fruit, moss or even dog food. They don’t care. If they can eat it, they will. They can also cohabitate in a tank with desert hairy scorpions, in case you want to keep pets only Wednesday Addams will appreciate.

8. Fennec Fox

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Hardiness score: 10

Scariness score: 2

Fennec foxes are just about the cutest desert creature one could dream up. It’s as if a kindergartener and a biologist teamed up to design an animal. They have fluffy, fur-covered feet to protect their paw pads from the hot sand, massive ears that help disperse heat and fur that matches the sand almost perfectly.

They’re the only carnivore known to live in the Sahara Desert that can survive sans free water. Their kidneys are adapted to restrict water loss, so they can mostly survive off of moisture from their food and dew from their burrows. They also speed up their breathing to regulate temperature, panting at a pace of more than 600 breaths per minute.

7. Sand Cat

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Hardiness score: 12

Scariness score: 1

Yes, we know the scores were on a scale from one to 10, but sand cats deserve extra credit. They give fennec foxes a run for their money in cuteness. If they weren’t better suited to desert life than our living room, we would already have brought one home. They’re only between 3 and 7 pounds fully grown, but they have more grit than a grizzly.

In 120-degree heat, humans would die of exposure awfully fast. We’d go with a blistering sunburn while our organs failed one by one. For a sand cat, 120 degrees is an average Tuesday. If temps get too extreme, they just dig a hole to chill in for a bit. When it comes to dinner, they’re not picky. They prefer small rodents, but they’ll eat anything that moves, including vipers and rattlesnakes. Keep in mind, they’re roughly the size of a Chihuahua. They’re basically house cats if house cats listened to death metal.

6. Thorny Devil

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Hardiness score: 10

Scariness score: 4

Thorny devils are relatively small desert animals, but most predators only target them if they’ve run out of options. Eating a thorny devil is something like eating a pinecone, only sharper. They have thorny spines from head to toe, and they have a crazy unique way of using these spines to survive the dry desert heat.

Thorny devils allow dew to condense on their bodies during the night, and the grooves between their scales channel the water directly to their mouths. The same process works when it rains. They can also absorb water directly from their skin. In times of severe drought, they burrow in sand, likely to absorb moisture from the cooler earth below.

4. Bighorn Sheep (Tie)

Bighorn Ram Facing Left, Valley of Fire SP, Nevada

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Hardiness score: 10

Scariness score: 5

Sheep aren’t the first creatures to come to mind when you think of the word “tough,” but bighorn sheep are happy to change your mind. Their massive, curved horns weigh up to 30 pounds, and bighorn sheep in certain regions can weigh up to 500 pounds.

They live pretty much all over the place, including in dry, mountainous deserts with terrain even Bear Grylls would find challenging. Their split hooves help them grip unstable cliff sides to practically defy gravity.

4. Camel (Tie)

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Hardiness score: 10

Scariness score: 5

The camel is an absolute beast of a desert animal. What other animal can you think of that’s up to 11 feet long and weighs up to 1,200 pounds, living off of nothing but grass? OK, grass, grains, wheat and oats, but still. If a bodybuilder ate a diet like that, they’d collapse mid-squat, but camels? Nah.

They power half a ton of muscle with a vegan diet and about two drops of water. No joke: Camels store up to 80 pounds of fat in the hump on their backs, which breaks down to provide nourishment during droughts and times of food scarcity. They can go up to two weeks without water in the desert or several months without it in cool temperatures. For comparison, we’d only last between three and five days under the same conditions.

3. Desert Long-Eared Bat

Michel VIARD / Getty Images

Hardiness score: 9

Scariness score: 7

We always pictured bats living in dark, damp caves, but these desert animals live in barren, arid regions with barely any vegetation. They dwell in rock crevices if they can find them, but it’s their diet that makes them one of the most indestructible, intimidating animals.

They eat mostly arachnids, and they’re impervious to the venom of scorpions. They catch them, bite their heads off, and gobble them up. They get stung in the face from time to time, which isn’t pleasant, but the venom doesn’t phase them.

2. Sidewinder Rattlesnake

Bitis peringueyi, PÃ©ringuey's Adder, poison snake from Namibia sand desert. Small viper in the nature habitat, Namib-Naukluft Park in Africa. Wildlife scene from nature, reptile behaviour, sunny day.

Ondrej Prosicky / Getty Images

Hardiness score: 8

Scariness score: 10

Snakes are cool. The fact that they have exactly zero legs and can still move with lightning speed is nuts. If we had no limbs, we would be slowly rolling our way to the nearest taco truck. In the desert, we’d simply pass away. Not the sidewinder. The hot desert sand is cozy to a sidewinder. It’s like a comfy freeway that they move across sideways, like an ocean wave if ocean waves came with lethal venom.

Sidewinders are coldblooded. They majorly slow down when temperatures dip below the 70s, but temperatures have to get pretty extreme to take a sidewinder down for good.

1. Hairy Desert Scorpion

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Hardiness score: 9

Scariness score: 10

Giant desert scorpions are nothing to laugh at, but does that need to be said? Screaming would be a more appropriate reaction. If you find hairy giant desert scorpions comedic, you scare us. Their venom isn’t strong enough to kill a person, but who cares? Half a foot of evil incarnate is enough to send us into an arachnid-proof bunker.

These demons scuttle around the desert with massive claws, a whip-like stinger and a stack of their desert death babies on their back. No, thank you.