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MAN: I live in the middle of Australia,
and it's just a fascinating country.
Just to wake up every day, see the ranges,
see the blue sky startling against the red,
it's just incredible, and you just can't get sick of it.
It's just like the red dirt.
The red dirt is just so fine here and it gets into everything,
and I think that's what it does to an actual person -
it just gets into your soul
and you're stuck with it for the rest of your life. (CHUCKLES)
People think deserts are actually not diverse at all, but they are.
They're quite diverse.
It's just that things operate differently in a desert.
When the sun sets here, it actually opens up the world,
and if you'd wake up the next morning,
you would see all the tracks
and realise that the whole night has been alive with animals.
Reptiles are absolutely amazing creatures.
They've been able to colonise places in the world
which humans still find it hard to colonise.
Thorny devils are everywhere in the desert.
However, they blend in so well, you can walk straight past one, almost,
and there can be one just next to a spinifex bush
and you won't even know it's there.
So, when you do see one, it's always excitement,
because it's the rush of actually finding and seeing it there.
The thorny devil is an amazing creature.
It is so well made for living in a desert.
The main thing with living in a desert
is that you can't do anything without water.
A thorny devil just has to simply stand in a puddle of water
and the water will go straight up its legs, onto its back
and then into its mouth through capillary action.
Now, on the back of their neck, they have quite a large lump,
and that's probably a decoy head, and it's actually made of fat.
If a bird comes to attack them,
they'll actually duck their head down into the sand,
but they expose that lump and it looks like the head.
The bird might break a bit off and off it goes.
It'll heal over, it'll never grow back,
but it gives them a second chance at life.
A lot of people find it hard to get an empathy for reptiles,
and I think they are such an amazing creature
that we can learn so much from them.
Things that live in a desert
and things that have been around
for many, many, tens of thousands of years,
have learnt how to live.
We should learn how to live in the desert
just by watching the animals that have already existed here.