The Sahara is the largest hot desert in the world, spanning 9.2 million square kilometres (3.6 million square miles) – an area almost as large as the United States or China (both around 9.8 million square kilometres).
The desert spreads across 11 countries in North Africa, including Morocco, Egypt and Algeria. In Algeria, the sand dunes of the Sahara can reach up to 430 metres (1,411 feet) high.
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As it's one of the hottest places on Earth and receives less than three inches of rain each year, any wildlife in the Sahara needs a host of special adaptations to withstand the extreme conditions.
Among the highly adapted mammals are the fennec fox, addax antelope, Saharan cheetah and sand cat. Reptiles include the Sahara sand viper and the horned desert viper, which sidewinds to navigate the hot sand efficiently.
But there is one creature that escapes the heat by living below the desert, and just so happens to be one of the oddest looking animals on the planet. Some say it looks like a sabre-toothed sausage. It is, of course, the naked mole rat.
Naked moles rats are well adapted to subterranean life, able to run backwards as well as forwards so the tight space in their network of tunnels isn't a problem for them.
Mole rats are the only mammal that live like social insects (termites, in particular). Each colony is ruled by a single breeding queen capable of pumping out dozens of babies several times a year.
Like a social insect queen, she lives far longer than the rest of the colony, but with no age-related decline in her fertility, thereby allowing her to leave an extraordinary genetic legacy during her abnormally long reproductive life.
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