Deserts Teeming with Life in an Exhibition at National Museum of Natural History in Paris Paris, 4 May (ONA) — The Grand Gallery of the National Museum of Natural History in the French capital, Paris, is hosting an exhibition about the world’s deserts and the contradictions these arid lands embody. Far from the idea of empty, lifeless spaces, the exhibition titled “Desert” portrays these regions as worlds where life adapts in astonishing ways to survive. Visitors can explore the great desert families of the Earth and the extraordinary adaptive abilities of animals, plants, and humans. The exhibition’s designer, Didier Lafaurie, explained that the idea was to move beyond the classic image of a camel amid sand dunes with a Tuareg caravan and instead convince the audience that deserts are not just this single scene but rather diverse landscapes bustling with life and activity. The National Museum of Natural History presents deserts in all their forms—whether hot, like the African or Gulf deserts, or cold with fluctuating temperatures throughout the year, like the Gobi Desert, or even polar deserts, which some may not consider deserts at all.Didier Lafaurie noted that the common factor uniting all these desert forms is aridity, resulting from a permanent lack of water. He pointed out that water scarcity is not measured by its availability during a limited period of the year, such as snowfall in Greenland or rainfall in central Australia, but rather by its inaccessibility to living beings—either because it freezes or evaporates too quickly. While humans face the greatest challenges in finding water and enduring these conditions, the exhibition presents a true catalog of desert life and the ingenious tricks living beings develop to cope, such as hiding in barren areas, techniques to mitigate extreme heat, and creating water reserves. Among the fascinating examples featured are burrowing owls that take refuge underground, Arctic foxes with changing fur colours, and emperor penguins that form collective thermal huddles. On the human side, there are the nomadic Tuareg of the desert or the Inuit of Greenland, who have developed mobile dwellings like lightweight, collapsible tents or sleds covered with musk ox fur. Additionally, the exhibition highlights how deserts are evolving under the pressure of climate change, with polar deserts melting and shrinking while hot deserts expand toward temperate regions. The event pays special tribute to the French explorer Théodore Monod, a desert specialist, through his words that encapsulate the spirit of the exhibition: “The desert is beautiful, it does not lie, it is pure. It must be approached with respect.”— Ends/Khalid