North Africa is home to the greatest desert on Earth, the Sahara. This vast wilderness, the size of the United States, is the toughest part of the African continent – the sun rules mercilessly here. In this haunting wilderness, dunes ‘sing’, sandstorms stretch for a thousand miles and rain may not fall for 50 years. But it wasn’t always like this. This is a story of an apocalypse and how, when nature is overrun, some are forced to flee, some endure, but a few seize the opportunity to establish a new order. On the fringes of the Great Desert, Grevy’s zebras battle over dwindling rivers, and weird naked mole rats avoid the heat by living a bizarre underground existence. Within the desert, camels seek out water with the help of their herders, while tiny barn swallows must go it alone and navigate across thousands of square miles of barren sand to find a solitary life-saving oasis. In the heart of the Sahara very little life can survive the sun’s onslaught. Just one animal takes on the midday sun, and it needs a ‘spacesuit’ to do it. The silver ant waits until all other creatures have fled the scorching dunes before finally emerging to feed in peace.