The Mars rover with its innovative wheels, which can ‘swim’ through sand, modelled on a desert lizard. Marco Schmidt / Universität Würzburg

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To effectively travel on Mars, rovers need to deal with a lot of sand. German engineers have created a new kind of ground rover that uses swimming motions to push through sand that may otherwise cause the wheels to get stuck. Its inspiration: the African sandfish ( Scincus scincus ), a lizard known for burrowing into the Sahara Desert and literally swimming through its sand like a fish.…