Desert lizards use body oscillations to dive into sand

In the desert, the sand surface can become extremely hot during the day, up to 70ºC. In order to escape these temperatures, some desert lizards adopt a fascinating strategy: They dive a few centimeters under the sand surface where it's much cooler (around 40º C). This is also a good strategy to hide and to escape from predators. But diving into the sand is a difficult task which requires a large force to overcome sand friction. In order to dive more easily, different genera of lizards