The Namib is a coastal desert in Southern Africa. According to the broadest definition, the Namib stretches for more than 2,000 kilometres (1,200 mi) along the Atlantic coasts of Angola, Namibia, and South Africa, extending southward from the Carunjamba River in Angola, through Namibia and to the Olifants River in Western Cape, South Africa. The Namib's northernmost portion, which extends 450 kilometres (280 mi) from the Angola-Namibia border, is known as Moçâmedes Desert, while its southern portion approaches the neighboring Kalahari Desert. From the Atlantic coast eastward, the Namib gradually ascends in elevation, reaching up to 200 kilometres (120 mi) inland to the foot of the Great Escarpment. Annual precipitation ranges from 2 millimetres (0.079 in) in the aridest regions to 200 millimetres (7.9 in) at the escarpment, making the Namib the only true desert in southern Africa. Having endured arid or semi-arid conditions for roughly 55–80 million years, the Namib may be the oldest desert in the world and contains some of the world's driest regions, with only western South America's Atacama Desert to challenge it for age and aridity benchmarks.
The Namib-Naukluft Park is a national park in western Namibia, situated between the coast of the Atlantic Ocean and the edge of the Great Escarpment. It encompasses part of the Namib Desert, the Naukluft mountain range, and the lagoon at Sandwich Harbour. The best-known area of the park and one of the main visitor attractions in Namibia is Sossusvlei, a clay pan surrounded by dunes, and Sesriem, a small canyon of the Tsauchab. The desert research station of Gobabeb is situated within the park.
Wasps in the family Pompilidae are commonly called spider wasps, spider-hunting wasps, or pompilid wasps. The family is cosmopolitan, with some 5,000 species in six subfamilies. Nearly all species are solitary, and most capture and paralyze prey, though members of the subfamily Ceropalinae are kleptoparasites of other pompilids, or ectoparasitoids of living spiders.
Sandboarding is a boardsport and extreme sport similar to snowboarding that involves riding across or down a sand dune while standing on a board, either with both feet strapped in or while standing loose, without bindings. Sandboarding can also be practised sitting down or lying on the belly or the back. It typically involves a sandboard, although it is also possible to use sleds, surfboards, a skateboard deck, or snowboards.
Leucorchestris arenicola, commonly called the dancing white lady spider, is a huntsman spider in the family Sparassidae and genus Leucorchestris. It is commonly found in the Namib desert of Namibia. It is often mistaken with the similarly named Carparachne aureoflava, or more commonly known as the wheel spider from the same location. L. arenicola relies on seismic vibrations, called drumming, for communication. It taps its foremost legs on the sand to send messages to other white lady spiders. Male L. arenicola will travel over 50 m in one night searching for a mate. If they find a mate, they must be extremely careful, for drumming the wrong message can be deadly. One of the major features that characterizes its nocturnal behavior is its specialized vision, using eight eyes in different orientations to capture a panoramic view of the surroundings. L. arenicola spiders use temporal summation in order to be able to see dim lighting during night-time wanderings. The species was first described by Reginald Frederick Lawrence in 1962, who described all the species in the genus Leucorchestris.
Animal locomotion, in ethology, is any of a variety of methods that animals use to move from one place to another. Some modes of locomotion are (initially) self-propelled, e.g., running, swimming, jumping, flying, hopping, soaring and gliding. There are also many animal species that depend on their environment for transportation, a type of mobility called passive locomotion, e.g., sailing, kiting (spiders), rolling or riding other animals (phoresis).
The Namaqua chameleon is a ground-living lizard found in the western desert regions of Namibia, South Africa and southern Angola.
Terrestrial locomotion has evolved as animals adapted from aquatic to terrestrial environments. Locomotion on land raises different problems than that in water, with reduced friction being replaced by the increased effects of gravity.
Leucorchestris is a genus of African huntsman spiders that was first described in 1962 by R. F. Lawrence, who described all of the species in the genus between 1962 and 1966.
The Namib brush-tailed gerbil or Setzer's hairy-footed gerbil is a species of rodent endemic to Angola and Namibia. Its natural habitats are sandy and gravelly plains. It stays in its burrow by day, emerging at night to feed on arthropods, vegetable matter, and seeds.
The dune hairy-footed gerbil, or the Namib dune gerbil is a species of rodent found only in Namibia. Its natural habitat is temperate desert where it lives in loose sand among sand dunes, feeding opportunistically on arthropods, seeds and green vegetation.
Pompilus cinereus, the leaden spider wasp is the most widespread species of the Pompilus spider wasps, and throughout a large proportion of its wide distribution is the only species of Pompilus. It is the type species of the genus Pompilus and therefore of the family Pompilidae.
Priocnemis monachus is a species of spider wasp endemic to New Zealand, where it is known as the black hunting wasp or ngaro wīwī. It hunts large tunnelweb or trapdoor spiders, paralysing them with its sting and storing them in burrows for its larvae to eat alive. It is the largest member of the family Pompilidae in New Zealand.
Palystes is a genus of huntsman spiders, commonly called rain spiders or lizard-eating spiders, occurring in Africa, India, Australia, and the Pacific. The most common and widespread species is P. superciliosus, found in South Africa, home to 12 species in the genus. The name Palystes is derived from either the Latin palaestes or the Greek palaistes, meaning "wrestler". The genus was first described by Ludwig Carl Christian Koch in 1875.
Carparachne is a genus of Namibian huntsman spiders that was first described by R. F. Lawrence in 1962. As of September 2019 it contains two species, found in Namibia: C. alba and C. aureoflava. The golden wheel spider uses cartwheeling to move across hot, sandy ground, similar to the related Cebrennus rechenbergi, which uses a flic-flac motion.
Pachydactylus rangei, the Namib sand gecko or Namib web-footed gecko, is a species of small lizard in the family Gekkonidae. It inhabits the arid areas of Angola, Namibia, and South Africa, and was first described in 1908 by Swedish zoologist Lars Gabriel Andersson, who named it after its finder, German geologist Dr. Paul Range.
Cebrennus rechenbergi, also known as the Moroccan flic-flac spider and cartwheeling spider, is a species of huntsman spider indigenous to the sand dunes of the Erg Chebbi desert in Morocco. If provoked or threatened it can escape by doubling its normal walking speed using forward or backward flips similar to acrobatic flic-flac movements used by gymnasts. C. rechenbergi is the only spider known to use this unique form of rolling locomotion. The discovery of the Moroccan flic-flac spider has influenced biomimetic robot research, resulting in the development of an experimental robot based on the spider's motion.
Toktokkies are various species of beetles that belong to the large Tenebrionidae family, also known as Darkling beetle. Toktokkies do not belong to a particular tribe or genus of Tenebrionids, but rather a selection of flightless species that make distinct noises by tapping on the ground with the abdomen. The Tenebrionidae family to which these beetles belong is quite large, with almost 3,500 species inhabiting Southern Africa. Nearly 200 species of Toktokkies inhabit the Namibia and 20 have adapted to the extreme temperatures of the Namib Desert. The most common Toktokkies in the Namib Desert are the Fog Basking beetle and the button beetle or trench-digging beetle.
Seothyra, commonly known as the buckspoor spiders, buck spoor spiders or just spoor spiders, belong to a sand-dwelling, burrowing genus of araneomorph spiders in the family Eresidae. The 13 species are endemic to the arid, sandy flats and semistabilized red dunes of southern Africa. They are sexually dimorphic. The tiny males, which are seldom seen, imitate sugar ants or velvet ants in their appearance and habits, while the females hide in and hunt from their characteristic burrows. They are thermophilous, with males as well as females being most active on hot days.
The Namib Desert dune ant, is a large ant species distinguished by white and black symmetrical stripes and markings on its hairy abdomen. It has an average mass of 45 milligrams (0.0016 oz). It is classified within the carpenter ant genus, a large group of more than 1,000 known species, many of which are associated with forested habitats in America and elsewhere. However C. detritus inhabits the hot dry dunes of the hyper-arid central Namib Desert in Southern Africa. Like many other ant species, it obtains its food and moisture by climbing the stalks of plants and drinking honeydew from scale insects, which themselves feed on shrubs and other perennial plants. It will also feed on dead insects. The nests of this species, located amongst perennial plant roots, are systems of tunnels and chambers between 100–400 millimetres (3.9–15.7 in) deep. Nests can reach temperatures of 35 °C (95 °F) in summer, though they are much cooler in winter, typically 20–23 °C (68–73 °F). Nests are often lined with detritus - hence the binomial Latin name of the species. Each colony contains a single queen.
