What do you think of this fact?
Imagine living in the desert and never reaching for a glass of water. For kangaroo rats, that’s normal. These small desert rodents, which hop around on huge hind legs, rarely, if ever, drink.
Water from dry seeds
Kangaroo rats mostly eat seeds, and those seeds look bone-dry. But when the body breaks down the nutrients inside, water is produced as a by-product. Add the little moisture the seeds already contain, and that covers their needs.
According to the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, the animals prefer seeds rich in carbohydrates, which yield about half a gram of water for every gram of seed eaten. Their cheeks come with fur-lined pouches on the outside, so they can carry seeds home in bulk.
Saving every drop
Making water is only half the trick. The other half is not losing it. Their kidneys concentrate urine so much that it becomes thick and viscous. During the hot day, kangaroo rats stay in their burrows and only come out at night. They plug the entrances, at White Sands with sand, so that it stays cooler and more humid down there.
Some species store piles of seeds in their burrows. According to the Desert Museum, those seeds can soak up to 30 percent more moisture from the humid air.
Even their breath is recycled. Breathing out warm, humid air into the desert would dry them out. As biologist Knut Schmidt-Nielsen of Duke University discovered, structures inside their nose act as a trap: moisture from the outgoing breath condenses on the cool surfaces there, and the next breath picks it up again on its way back to the lungs.
Bonus fact: True to their name, kangaroo rats are top jumpers. According to the Desert Museum, they can jump up to 2.75 meters in a single bound, which helps them escape predators.
A desert animal that turns breakfast into drinking water: that’s less a diet than a superpower.