Which hot desert is the largest in the world and home to camels and scorpions?

The largest hot desert in the world, home to camels and scorpions, is the Sahara Desert. It covers roughly 9.2 million square kilometres across North Africa, extending from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea and from the Mediterranean region south toward the Sahel.

The Sahara is not one unbroken sea of sand. Its landscapes include rocky plateaus, gravel plains, mountain ranges, dry valleys, salt flats, oases and sand seas called ergs. Camels are especially well adapted to desert travel and can cross long distances between water sources, while scorpions survive by sheltering from extreme heat and conserving moisture.

The Sahara is the world’s largest hot desert, but it is not the largest desert overall. Antarctica and the Arctic are larger because polar deserts also receive very little precipitation. Another common misconception is that the Sahara is permanently unchanging: over thousands of years, shifts in Earth’s orbit and monsoon patterns have repeatedly transformed parts of it into grassland or savanna.