Paris: The Grand Gallery of the National Museum of Natural History in the French capital is hosting an exhibition about the world’s deserts and the contradictions these arid lands embody.

According to Oman News Agency, the exhibition titled “Desert” challenges the traditional perception of deserts as empty, lifeless spaces by portraying these regions as worlds where life adapts in astonishing ways to survive. Visitors have the opportunity to explore the great desert families of the Earth and witness the extraordinary adaptive abilities of animals, plants, and humans.

The exhibition’s designer, Didier Lafaurie, stated that the aim was to move beyond the classic image of a camel amid sand dunes with a Tuareg caravan. Instead, the exhibition seeks to 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 various forms, whether hot, like the African or Gulf deserts, cold with fluctuating temperatures, 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.

While humans face significant challenges in finding water and enduring these conditions, the exhibition presents a true catalog of desert life and the ingenious strategies living beings develop to cope. These include hiding in barren areas, techniques to mitigate extreme heat, and creating water reserves. Fascinating examples featured in the exhibition include burrowing owls that take refuge underground, Arctic foxes with changing fur colors, 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 Th©odore 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.”