NCERT Solutions Curiosity Chapter 2 –26Section 2.3 — In-text Questions

Book page 24 Updated on2026-09-05

Q1.

Notice that these two types of plants found in different regions are different from each other. Why is it so? Why does the biodiversity of a region vary from that of another?

Answer

Because the conditions of the two regions are completely different, and only plants that can survive those particular conditions are able to live there.

	Desert of Rajasthan — cactus (Fig. 2.9)	Himalayas of Himachal — deodar (Fig. 2.10)
Conditions	Very little water; very hot by day, very cold at night	Extreme cold with frequent snowfall
What the plant looks like	Thick and fleshy stems	Conical shape, flexible and sloping branches
How it helps	The fleshy stem stores water and helps the plant tolerate the hot conditions	The shape lets the snow slide off easily, so branches do not break under its weight

The reasoning in one line: a deodar planted in the Thar would dry up because it has no way to store water; a cactus on a Himalayan slope would be crushed and frozen by snow settling on it. Each is built for one set of conditions only. Biodiversity varies from region to region because of diverse conditions.

Did you know? A cactus also has its leaves reduced to spines. Broad leaves would lose a great deal of water into the hot dry air — and the spines protect the stored water from thirsty animals as well.

Q2.

Look at the images of a camel from the hot desert of Rajasthan (Fig. 2.11) and a camel from the cold desert of Ladakh (Fig. 2.12). What are the differences you observe between them? What advantages do these differences provide to these camels?

Answer

Both are camels, but their bodies are built for two very different deserts.

Feature	Camel of the hot desert (Rajasthan)	Camel of the cold desert (Ladakh)	Advantage
Legs	Long legs, greater height	Comparatively short legs and shorter height	Long legs keep the body away from the hot sand; short legs give balance while walking in mountainous regions
Hooves	Wide hooves	Smaller, harder hooves	Wide hooves spread the weight so the camel walks on sand without sinking into it
Humps	One hump	Two humps	Humps store food; the two humps of the cold-desert camel shrink in late winter as the stored food is used up
Hair	Short hair	Long hair from head to neck	Long hair traps warmth and helps it survive the freezing winters of Ladakh

Why both are still camels: a desert — hot or cold — is a place with very little water and very little food. Both animals therefore keep the same basic camel design: humps to store food and a body that can go long without water. What differs is the ground they walk on and the temperature — sand and heat in Rajasthan, rocky slopes and snow in Ladakh — and it is exactly those two things that the legs, hooves and hair have adapted to.

Q3.

What other features can help camels to survive in the desert?

Answer

The chapter gives three more, told by Kashi from Rajasthan, and there are others you can add.

They excrete only small amounts of urine.
Their dung is dry — very little water is lost with it.
They do not sweat.

Little urine + dry dung + no sweating
= very little water leaves the body
= a camel can survive for many days without drinking water

Other helpful features you can observe or find out about:

Long eyelashes and closable nostrils keep blowing sand out of the eyes and nose.
Thick leathery pads on the knees and chest let the camel sit on burning sand.
It can eat thorny desert plants such as khejri and babool, which few other animals can chew.
It can drink a very large quantity of water at one time when water is finally found.

Why saving water is the whole problem in a desert: plants and animals lose water constantly through breathing, sweating and waste. In a place where there is almost no water to replace it, survival depends entirely on losing less. Every camel adaptation in the list above does one job — it saves water. That is why a camel is called the ship of the desert.

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