The sand skink, Plestiodon reynoldsi, is famous for its ability to swim through sand at depths of up to 10 centimetres. That’s strange because although sand sometimes act like a fluid, it also acts as a solid supporting large loads such as human footfall. So how do sand skinks do it?
Today, Takashi Shimada at the University of Tokyo in Japan and a few buddies reveal the secret. They say that the sand skinks’ swimming action exploits sand’s fluid-like nature AND its ability to act like a solid. And they’ve built a computer model to simulate how this works.
Why doesn’t the sand skink sink?