The road from coorain: an analysis

The world is a gigantic machine created to survive and maintain order. Wherever and whenever life exists, it finds a way to survive, utilizing the environment to its benefit and taking as muchadvantage as possible of the resources provided. Plants shape their roots and leaves to adapt to the cold and heat of seasons; animals develop extraordinary abilities and color their bodies with the colorof the background. In fact, life adapts so well to the environment where it blooms that it would not be able to sustain life in a different place. This characteristics of life becomes more conspicuouswhen opposites such as the arid planes of Australia described in “The Road from Coorain” and the thick jungles of Petén, Guatemala, are considered
The environment of Australia in the essay “The Roadfrom Coorain” by Jill Ker Conway is described as a desolated land with little vegetation. However, the few plants that survive the heat of the planes are very well adapted, developing ways to storeand retain water. Conway wrote: “stronger bushes grow…perfectly adapted to resist the drying sun.” She supports that fact through some specific examples such as the annual saltbush, a grayish plant that“stores its own water in small balloonlike round leaves and thrives long after the rains have vanished.” However, unlike the plants designed to survive in dry environments, the flora in the junglesof Petén are not designed to hold water. Most plants in humid areas don’t have water storing organs but a one-way water transportation system beginning from the root and ending at the leaves. Also,they tend to have wide, porous leaves that maximize transpiration (loss of water through leaves), a characteristic not found in plants at dry places that develop needle-like leaves to minimize waterloss.
Little vegetation also means little herbivores. This means that there are few preys. Therefore, depredators need an effective way to hunt and preys need to hide well. To do so animals in the...