The Living Desert (1953)

Though the desert to most people represents an area of arid desolation, the film shows that the desert is teeming with life; plant life; the mating battles of the desert tortoises; a family of coati mundi; peccaries chasing a bobcat; rattlesnakes; the red-tailed hawk after a dinner of bats; the desert toads; the millipede; the burrowing snake; the "square-dance" of the scorpions; kangaroo rats and their flight from a king snake; the mysterious sidewinder; the round-tail ground squirrels; roadrunners; the battle between the pepsis wasp and the tarantula; a hawk fights to the finish with a rattlesnake. The film ends with a cloudburst and a flash flood, coming to its climax in a time-lapse sequence of desert wildflowers blooming, providing a note of life-triumpant over the harsh setting that is the desert.