The Mars rover with its innovative wheels, which can ‘swim’ through sand, modelled on a desert lizard. Marco Schmidt / Universität Würzburg Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. By signing up, you confirm you are 16+, will receive newsletters and promotional content and agree to our Terms of Use and acknowledge the data practices in our Privacy Policy . You may unsubscribe at any time. 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. It’s one of the animal kingdom’s strangest methods of propulsion, but it may help shape the future of Mars exploration .…