Sonoran
Desert
“Pigs” of the Desert
W
hat looks like a pig, wears a “necklace,” and eats
cactus? It’s a javelina (hav-uh-LEE-nuh). This animal
lives in the Sonoran Desert. The “necklace” is a ring of white
fur around its neck.
Food Chains
Properties of Food Chains
Javelinas live in groups called bands. They sleep during
the heat of the day and come out at night to eat.
Javelinas are consumers —they get energy by eating
other living things. A favorite javelina food is prickly
pear cactus. Prickly pear is a producer. It gets its energy
from the Sun. Luckily for javelinas, there is plenty of cactus
to go around. There are far more producers than
consumers in the desert.
Coyotes are predators that hunt
javelinas. After the coyotes are
done eating, vultures will clear
away any meat that was left
behind. These scavengers are
consumers that make sure nothing
goes to waste.
Do You
Know?
File
Javelinas are not actually pigs.
They belong to an animal group
called peccaries (PECK-uh-reez),
which are closely related to pigs.
© Learning A–Z All rights reserved.
www.sciencea-z.com
Javelinas eat all of a prickly pear
cactus plant—even the sharp spines!
With enough moist prickly pear to eat,
javelinas don’t need to drink water.
Investigation File
Turkey vultures have no
feathers near their face.
Without feathers, their faces
stay cleaner when feeding on
a messy carcass.
Credits: left: © Bob Gibbons/Alamy
right: © Joseph Vozniak/Dreamstime.com
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Desert Cleanup Crew
In the Sonoran Desert, food can be hard to find. One
thing there’s plenty of is dung! The rainbow dung beetle
takes advantage of this common food source.
These beetles’ lives depend on dung, mostly from large
consumers. The beetles eat the dung. They also use it
to raise a family. Female and male dung beetles work
together to dig burrows near a dung pile. Then they
gather up balls of dung and drop
them in the burrow. Females lay
eggs inside the balls. When the
eggs hatch, the young beetles
Female rainbow
eat the dung!
dung beetle
These beetles play an important role in the Sonoran
Desert. They are decomposers— they break down organic
material from other animals. In the process, their own
waste goes into the desert soil. It provides nutrients for
producers, such as prickly pear cactuses.
Male rainbow dung
beetles have long
horns on their
heads.
Sonoran Desert
AN EXAMPLE OF A
Sonoran Desert
Food Chain
Arizona
secondary
consumer
primary
consumer
Mexico
coyote
All the organisms in this food
chain live in the Sonoran
Desert, shown in green.
javelina
producer
Sun
prickly
pear
Energy moves from the Sun
to producers to consumers in
this food chain.
scavenger
vulture
Wowser!
United States
decomposer
dung beetle
Dung beetles can clear
away as much as 80 percent
of the dung in an area!
Do You
Know?
Prickly pears make red
fruit called tuna in Spanish.
But be careful eating these
fruit—they have spines on
the outside!
Credits: top left, bottom left: © John Abbott/NPL/Minden
Pictures; center column, top to bottom, left to right (1): ©
Rinus Baak/Dreamstime.com; center column (2): © David
Cutts/Alamy; center column (3): © Eutoch/Dreamstime.
com; center column (4): © Joseph Vozniak/Dreamstime.
com; center column (5): © Rolf Nussbaumer Photography/
Alamy; right: © Hugoht/Dreamstime.com
© Learning A–Z All rights reserved.
www.sciencea-z.com
Investigation File
Food Chains } Properties of Food Chains } Sonoran Desert
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