THIS MELON CREATES A WHOLE ECOSYSTEM IN THE DESERT ? It’s not easy to live in southern Africa’s Namibia Desert. It’s one of the oldest and driest deserts in the world, and many of the plants and animals that survive there have bizarre adaptations—and are only found in this desert. One of these is the nara melon, which not only builds its own habitat in this harsh environment, but also forms the base of a whole desert ecosystem. Deserts aren’t known for being the coziest habitats, but even so, the Namib is extreme. It’s been around for at least 55 million years, and it’s been hyper-arid—or extremely dry—for the last five million or more. It has an average annual rainfall of just ten centimeters, and sometimes years pass without any rain at all. As a result, the sandy, dry soil gets easily blown around by the desert’s strong winds, and it contains very little of the nutrients plants need to grow. Even so, there are plants here—and the nara plant does so well that it grows a m...