Google Street View uses camel to map Arabian desert

There aren't a lot of streets in the UAE'sLiwa Desert, but you can now explore themassive, sandy dunes on Google Street View anyway.

Google announced this week that a virtual tour of the desert in the United Arab Emirates is now online, from its date farms, to 40-metre-high dunes, to the largest oasis in the Arabian Peninsula.

"We hope this collection gives you a glimpse of what it may be like to travel the desert as caravan merchants have for the past 3,000 years," wrote Najeeb Jarrar, Google's product marketing manager for the Middle East and North Africa, on the company's Lat Long blog.

The imagery was gathered with a camera mounted on the back of a camel.

"Using camels for the collection allowed us to collect authentic imagery and minimize our disruption of this fragile environment," Jarrar.

Google used its Trekker camera, which is typically worn on a backpack to gather off-street imagery in a huge variety of other places, including the Grand Canyon and many of Canada's national parks and historic sites.

The same day it released the Liwa Desert imagery, Google added 50 new Canadian national and provincial parks to Street View, including:

• Pacific Rim National Park Reserve in B.C.
• Hopewell Rocks in the Bay of Fundy in New Brunswick.
• Point Pelee National Park in Ontario.