4
INTRODUCTION
We have long had a fascination with deserts and other dry landscapes,
and the many plants and animals that not only survive but also
thrive in these harsh environments. The region we cover in this
photographic guide contains Earth’s largest desert, the Sahara; one
of its least explored deserts, the Rub al’Khali; vast areas of arid land
in the Arabian Peninsula and extensive tracts of Iran. Here also are
high mountain ranges: the Atlas, Zagros, Alborz, Taurus, Pontic and
Anatolian. The last contain one of the world’s great peaks, Agri Dagi,
better known to many as Mt Ararat. The impressive Mt Damavand
rises to 5,678 m (18,629 ft) in the Alborz range. Within the Sahara
are enormous mountain massifs lying like islands in a great ocean:
Ahaggar, Tassili, Tibesti and Aïr. Along the northern fringes of the
region sit two of the world’s greatest inland seas, the Black and
Caspian Seas. The waters of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, and the
Mediterranean and Red Seas, lap the region’s shores. The Nile River,
Earth’s longest river (although some now claim the Amazon for this
title), traverses the full length of Egypt and beyond the region to the
highlands of Ethiopia and Africa’s Great Lakes region.
There are 24 countries in the region that are wholly or partly
covered in this guidebook (25 if one includes the territory known as
Western Sahara that is claimed by Morocco as its own). Most are
desert lands, yet despite this they have a rich and diverse mammal
fauna. We have been lucky to have seen and worked with many of
these species in the wild: we rediscovered the Arabian Tahr in the
United Arab Emirates (UAE) long after it was believed to have become
extinct in that country. We were also the first to discover Blanford’s
Fox occupying the hill country of the UAE and northern Oman, the
Egyptian Spiny Mouse in the UAE and the Nile Grass Rat occupying
the monsoon woodland of the Omani Dhofar. There were other
discoveries, some expected and others not.
Our discoveries resulted from the fact that many areas in the
region are poorly known zoologically. Due to warfare and other
factors, some countries do not lend themselves to zoological
exploration, and a number have been no-go areas for decades. Much
of our information comes from the reports of explorer naturalists
dating back 50 years and more. Despite this, we have tapped a wealth
of information from filing cabinets filled with unpublished reports, our
own fieldwork, papers in scientific journals, the shelves and drawers of
museums, and in some cases by word of mouth.
More than 4,800 species of mammal are recognized worldwide, of
which about 332 are known from North Africa and the Middle East.
We believe not only that with further exploration more species will
come to light, but also that improved taxonomic technologies will
reveal some species to comprise a complex of species.
The region’s total includes 29 marine mammals, including 2 seals
- the endangered Mediterranean Monk Seal (Monachus monachus)
and the Caspian Seal (Phoca caspica), which lives only in the Caspian
Sea – and the Dugong (Dugong dugon), which in this region is known
only from the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea. The remaining 26 marine
mammals are members of the family Cetacea, the whales and
dolphins. The marine mammals are generally poorly known in the