Sonoran Desert and the Sonoran Desert Museum

By Simran Jayasinghe

On our trip to Arizona, we went to the Sonoran Desert museum. If you would like to learn more about our trip to Arizona and the desert museum, click here. When I got home, I decided to research the deserts in California. A desert is a dry area that gets very little amounts of rain per year and where nothing much grows. The hottest, driest desert in the world is the Atacama Desert in Chile. Deserts are usually next to mountains because the mountains create a rainshadow (All the moisture in the cloud falls in the mountain and nothing is left for the desert). Sometimes though, it does rain in the desert, and when it rains, it rains a lot! But, the water doesn’t stay. It evaporates or the plants take it up.

I found that there are three deserts in California: The Mojave Desert, which is mainly in southern California, and southern Nevada; The Great Basin Desert, which is above the Mojave desert and is the largest desert in the U.S.; and the Colorado desert which is part of the Sonoran desert is located in the southernmost part of California.

The Sonoran Desert stretches from Southern Arizona to New Mexico and there is even a bit in Mexico and Baja California. I was wondering why it is called the Sonoran Desert and found out that it covers the western half of the Mexican state of Sonora, and since it covers such a lot of this state it is named after it. It is home to 60 species of mammals, 350 species of birds, 20 amphibian species, 30 native fish species, 100 different reptile species, 1,000 native bee species, and 2,000 native plant species. Part of the desert is also home to the last population of Jaguars living in North America. It is also home to the Saguaro cacti.P1090952
The Saguaro cacti is what many of us picture when we talk about a desert.

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Posing at the entrance! (Image by the Jayasinghe family.)

A couple of months ago, we went to the Sonoran Desert Museum. The Sonoran Desert Museum is the largest outdoor museum in North America and the museum is located in Tuscon, Arizona. The full area of the museum is 97 acres. There are different trails, and along each trail you see exhibits featuring animals, plants, flowers, and more. In this way it is kind of like a zoo. There was a mountain lion exhibit, a Mexican gray wolf exhibit, a black bear exhibit, a snake exhibit, and so on. There is an aquarium called the Warden Aquarium, and a theatre called the Warden Oasis Theatre. In the theatre they hold many different shows and we saw the one called ‘Live, and (sort of) on the Loose!’  This show only takes place Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and Sundays. In the Warden Aquarium, there are new touch-tanks for kids to look at, and touch. There is a bird show held outside called Raptor-Free Flight, where you get to see some different species of birds fly from tree to tree without tethers. Be sure to go to the Arizona’s Sonoran Desert Museum. You just can’t miss out!

To find out more about Arizona’s Sonoran Desert Museum, click here.

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