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All
life on earth is focussed on the matter of survival. In
most cases that means finding food to sustain oneself
and one’s progeny as well as taking measures to protect
oneself from danger. The desert is a particularly harsh
environment in which to survive. Both plants and animals
have often needed to resort to extreme measures to
escape destruction. Plants arm themselves with sharp
spines or strong poisons to prevent being eaten by
herbivores. They have developed many different ways to
meet the challenges of drought and heat. And they are
obviously successful as they are still around to provide
food for the desert creatures and enjoyment to our eyes.
Desert animals, apart from birds and
lizards, are mainly nocturnal, or only active at dawn
and dusk. They avoid the heat of the day by going
underground or hiding in vegetation. Even insects are
much more prevalent at night than in the daytime.
If we have a look at the food ladder from the bottom
rung upwards, insects, lizards and small rodents are
right there at the bottom.
The tiniest hunter whose insect traps we can often find
in loose sand is the microscopic antlion. This is the
larva of a large flying insect, the antlion fly. The
antlion digs a pit in the sand and sits at the bottom of
the inverted cone waiting for an ant or other small
insect to come by. If such a prey appears on the edge of
the little crater, the antlion bombards it with grains
of sand until it loses its balance and comes tumbling
down the sandy slope to where the ferocious hunter
awaits it with open claws.
Insects of course are eaten by other insects, birds and
lizards, but also by small mammals like foxes and
wildcats. The small mountain fox, the Blanford’s fox,
survives for long stretches of time on a diet of insects
and sidr fruit. We all know the Yellow-bellied house
gecko that keeps down the number of mosquitoes, flies
and even cockroaches in our homes. One of the greatest
(and most beautiful) predators in the insect world is
the dragonfly who has a voracious appetite and can fly
extremely fast.
Small rodents play a very important role in the food
chain. In the UAE desert we have several species of
gerbils, kangaroo rats or jerboas, desert
rats or jirds and even a tiny pygmy shrew.
Another mammal that is food for many is the desert hare.
Also the cubs of foxes and wildcats fall prey to raptors
and carnivores. Were it not for these furry creatures,
few of the local larger carnivores and raptors could
live here. Gazelles, that used to be the main food for
the big cats such as the leopard and the caracal, were
hunted to extinction by man in the latter part of the
twentieth century. Only recently have they been
re-introduced to certain areas of the desert.
Small rodents, lizards and fishes are prey for the
various species of snakes that occur both in the sandy
desert and the wadis. The sand viper has a very passive
way of hunting. It wriggles its body into soft sand so
that only the tip of the snout with the eyes protrude
from the sand. There it lies until a gerbil or gecko
comes close enough so that it can be killed by its
poisonous bite. The sand and wadi racers (Coluber
species) depend on their speed to catch and then
immobilize their prey by poison and/or strangling.
One of the smallest raptors (prey-eating birds) common
in the UAE is the shrike. This small bird hunts mainly
for lizards, which - when caught - it jabs onto the long
thorns of the acacia trees and desert thorn bushes for
later consumption. These places are called ‘shrike’s
larders’.
The large raptors such as buzzards and eagles are
encountered only rarely and very few are resident in
this area. This is a strong indication that the state of
small wildlife is deplorable.
An extremely beautiful large raptor that can be seen
along Dubai Creek and the coasts is the Osprey, or Fish
Eagle. It is rather conspicuous with its wide white
wings and its preference for sitting on high places like
billboards and rock outcrops.
The only nocturnal raptor is the owl, of which several
species occur here. Desert Eagle owls have been nesting
for many years on the small mountain outcrop of Qarn
Nizwah along the road between Dubai and Hatta. Barn owls
and Little owls are not uncommon but because of their
silent nocturnal flight they are not noticed by many.
This is probably a good thing for in local belief they
bring bad luck and therefore they are often persecuted.
The largest bird around is the Lappet-faced vulture, but
although it eats meat, it is not a true raptor but a
carrion-eater. I once saw a group of five of these huge
creatures settled on a camel carcass near Mahda. When
our car approached, they wanted to fly away. For a bird
with a wingspan of several meters this is not an easy
feat. They ran and hopped along the gravel plain for a
while, flapping their wings until they had speed enough
to become airborne.
Falcons visit the UAE on their migration. In the old
days the bedu would catch wild falcons early in the
winter season, train them for the hunt and then release
them again at the end of the season, so they could fly
to their breeding grounds. The natural prey of the
falcons are birds such as the bustard (houbara)
and the stone curlew (karawan) that like to
forage in desert vegetation. The bedu hunted these birds
with their falcons both for sport and for food.
Now falcons, bustards and curlews have become so rare
that they must be reared in captivity in order for
falcon hunting to take place. When people started
breeding falcons for the hunt they started to breed
hybrids that were stronger and had more stamina than the
original Saker and Peregrine falcons. One bird that has
been used for this purpose is the Gyr falcon that
originates from northern countries (and colder
climates).
Of the smaller cats the Sand cat with the lovely name of
Felis margarita survives mainly on insects
and lizards, but this gentle-looking cat is also an
extremely adept snake killer. It shares this ability
with the White-tailed mongoose that lives in the
mountain valleys.
Wolves disappeared from the UAE desert quite a few years
ago, though since they still occur in Oman, they could
re-appear when the environment has something to offer
them again.
In the mountains the large predators have a hard time
fighting for survival. The recent 6-year long drought
was very detrimental to the vegetation and this combined
with the lack of water in the wadis led to a sharp
decrease of prey animals – both wild and feral. For many
years the big cats such as the caracals and leopards
have had to kill feral goats in order to survive. This
has brought them into conflict with the men who try to
maintain herds of goats in the mountains. And when the
caracals became so bold that they even started to take
chickens from people’s gardens, they became the target
of many hunts. A spate of caracal killings took place in
the 1990’s. It was not uncommon in those days to see the
carcasses of these cats strung up from trees and rocks.
The caracal deserves special mention in a story about
hunters. This medium-sized cat is very agile and can
jump high to catch birds in mid-air. It has also evolved
a hunting technique in which it uses the long black
tufts on its ears as a lure. It crouches behind a rock
with just the ear tufts showing, the moving hairs
looking like grass to unsuspecting goats or gazelles.
When the grass-eater comes to investigate, the caracal
jumps out and makes an easy catch.
Leopards have become very rare in the Hajar mountains. A
few may still survive, but the majority of remaining
Arabian leopards live in the mountains surrounding
Salalah in southern Oman and the adjoining area of
Yemen. Still, from time to time a leopard passes through
these northern areas and more often than not this
beautiful hunter then becomes hunted himself.
At the top of the food chain is man, always a hunter,
never a prey – at least not in this region. In the
pre-oil era the bedu regularly hunted hares and
gazelles, often with their falcons and their saluki
dogs. The catches were few and far between and provided
much-needed meat protein in a diet that consisted mainly
of dates and camel milk. The Spiny-tailed lizard (dhub)
of the sandy desert and the agile ‘tahr’ (a sort of
half-goat with the Latin name of Hemitragus
jayakari) of the high mountains were (and still
are) considered to be delicacies. The latter was thought
to be extinct for a long time but has turned out to
still exist in very small numbers in the wild now.
Nowadays, wild animals are no longer needed to provide
necessary food. In a desert that has become so empty of
wildlife, hunting is no longer a feasible sport.
Elsewhere in the world, it was the hunters who became
the wildlife protectors. The aim was to conserve a
certain amount of wildlife so that hunting could
continue in a controlled manner. The end product was
large scale conservation in nature reserves and game
parks and an increasing interest of non-hunters in the
life of wild fauna, so that now eco-tourism has become a
source of income in these countries. This could happen
in the UAE also. The Al Maha resort is a good example of
what protection of a habitat can do for the local flora
and fauna. It is possible that in time small scale
hunting of herbivores could be allowed there and in
other protected areas, if they were to be created. | 
