Adaptation to life in aeolian sand: how the sandfish lizard, Scincus scincus, prevents sand particles from entering its lungs

Adaptation to life in aeolian sand: how the sandfish lizard, Scincus scincus, prevents sand particles from entering its lungs

The sandfish lizard, Scincus scincus (Squamata: Scincidae), spends nearly its whole life in aeolian sand and only comes to the surface for foraging, defecating and mating. It is not yet understood how the animal can respire without sand particles entering its respiratory organs when buried under thick layers of sand. In this work, we integrated biological studies, computational calculations and...

Environmental interaction influences muscle activation strategy during sand-swimming in the sandfish lizard Scincus scincus.

Animals like the sandfish lizard (Scincus scincus) that live in desert sand locomote on and within a granular medium whose resistance to intrusion is dominated by frictional forces. Recent kinematic studies revealed that the sandfish utilizes a wave of body undulation during swimming. Models predict that a particular combination of wave amplitude and wavelength yields maximum speed for a given ...

Dynamic filter keeps sandfish lungs sand-free.

Dynamic filter keeps sandfish lungs sand-free

If you’ve ever found yourself struggling under a heavy pile of suitcases at the end of a holiday, spare a thought for the porters in some of the planet’s most remote locations. ‘When you start looking around, professional porters all around the world carry loads supported by their heads’, says Norman Heglund, from the Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium, who is fascinated by the technique...

Undulatory swimming in sand: subsurface locomotion of the sandfish lizard.

The desert-dwelling sandfish (Scincus scincus) moves within dry sand, a material that displays solid and fluidlike behavior. High-speed x-ray imaging shows that below the surface, the lizard no longer uses limbs for propulsion but generates thrust to overcome drag by propagating an undulatory traveling wave down the body. Although viscous hydrodynamics can predict swimming speed in fluids such ...