Abstract
The sandfish (Scincus scincus) is a lizard having the remarkable ability to move through desert sand for significant distances. It is well adapted to living in loose sand by virtue of a combination of morphological and behavioural specializations. We investigated the bodyform of the sandfish using 3D-laserscanning and explored its locomotion in loose desert sand using fast nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) imaging. The sandfish exhibits an in-plane meandering motion with a frequency of about 3 Hz and an amplitude of about half its body length accompanied by swimming-like (or trotting) movements of its limbs. No torsion of the body was observed, a movement required for a digging-behaviour. Simple calculations based on the Janssen model for granular material related to our findings on bodyform and locomotor behaviour render a local decompaction of the sand surrounding the moving sandfish very likely. Thus the sand locally behaves as a viscous fluid and not as a solid material. In this fluidised sand the sandfish is able to “swim” using its limbs.
Highlights
The scincid lizard genus Scincus [1] is distributed over an extensive desert belt ranging from the African west coast (Morocco to Senegal) through the Sahara and the Arabian peninsula into Jordan, Iraq and SW Iran [2,3,4,5,6]
Within this vast range, which biogeographically resides in Saharo-Sindian type, there are several species of Scincus scincus, S. albifasciatus, S. hemprichii, and S. mitranus
In the present study we demonstrate the mode of movement through sand of the sandfish S. scincus by using fast imaging nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR)
Summary
The scincid lizard genus Scincus [1] is distributed over an extensive desert belt ranging from the African west coast (Morocco to Senegal) through the Sahara and the Arabian peninsula into Jordan, Iraq and SW Iran [2,3,4,5,6]. Within this vast range, which biogeographically resides in Saharo-Sindian type, there are several species of Scincus scincus Recent authors have studied and/or discussed anatomical, morphological and behavioural aspects of the genus Scincus (the ‘‘sandfish’’ of the Arabs) in the Saharo-Arabian region [3,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18]
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