Desert Animals for Kids: Camels, Meerkats, Scorpions and Geckos

Seven animals that survive the heat and dryness of the desert: the camel, the coyote, the meerkat standing guard, the jerboa, a tiny jumping rodent with long back legs, the gecko and the iguana, and the scorpion. Many desert animals hide underground by day and come out at night when it is cooler.

Scorpion fills a whole row of the 8x8 grid. Camel and coyote run upward and jerboa reads backwards.

Desert Animals Vocabulary: 7 Words to Find

Words run across, up and down; 3 of the 7 read backwards. The longest word is Scorpion, with 8 letters.

Camel: A desert animal with one or two humps full of fat, able to go for days without drinking.
Coyote: A clever wild dog of North America that lives everywhere from deserts to cities.
Gecko: A small lizard that can climb walls thanks to millions of tiny hairs on its toes.
Iguana: A large lizard of hot, dry or tropical places that warms itself in the sun.
Jerboa: A tiny desert rodent with very long back legs that hops like a miniature kangaroo.
Meerkat: A small, social mongoose of southern Africa that stands upright on guard while its group feeds.
Scorpion: An eight-legged arachnid with pincers and a venomous sting at the tip of its curled tail. It glows under ultraviolet light.

How to Solve the Desert Animals Word Search

"Scorpion" fills a whole row from edge to edge. "Jerboa" has the only J and B, and reads backwards. "Camel" and "coyote" both start with C and both run upward.

Desert Habitat Activities for Kids

Ask children how each animal stays cool in the desert.
Find the world's great deserts on a map: the Sahara, the Kalahari and the Sonoran.
Compare day and night in the desert: which animals come out when?