Space the final frontier.

To this day, the words to Star Trek's next generation opening sequence still get me excited.

When I was a kid, my dream job, absolutely top of the list,

was to be an astronaut.

And the place I really wanted to explore was one of our closest planetary neighbors, the red

planet of Mars.

I mean, what kid wouldn't want to explore the planet with the largest volcano in the solar system.

Olympus Mons, as it's called, is 27 kilometers high. That's three times taller than

Mount Everest. And if that isn't enough to get your

imagination going, Mars also boasts the deepest canyon as well as loads of gullies,

craters, polar ice caps and deserts.

But it's not exactly the ideal location for life to thrive.

The temperature is on average a chilly minus 63 degrees Celsius. The atmosphere is 96%

carbon dioxide. There's no drinking water and even keeping our feet firmly on the

ground is kind of tricky given that gravity is about one-third of Earth's.

There's no denying it.

Mars is one inhospitable place to us. But that hasn't stopped us wanting to explore it.

And to do that, we need some help.

And although it sounds completely crazy, this is where a cart-wheeling desert spider could hold the answer.

Welcome back. I'm Patrick Ie, with 30 animals that made a smarter. An original

podcast from the BBC World Service which investigates the amazing things that

animals have taught us. Thank you all for your comments about the

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