With wingspans of up to 3.5 m, great albatrosses exploit differences in wind speed just above the waves to glide for hours with barely a wingbeat, a technique called dynamic soaring. A special tendon even locks their wings open without muscular effort. Tracking gray-headed albatrosses, researchers saw one complete a lap of the planet in just 46 days.
In 2022, a young tagged bar-tailed godwit flew from Alaska to Tasmania in about 11 days of nonstop flight, covering 13,560 km without eating, drinking or landing. Before departure, these birds pile on huge fat reserves and shrink their digestive organs, which are useless during the journey.
To escape rivals, a dung beetle rolls its ball of dung in a straight line. At night, it holds its course using the glowing band of the Milky Way. In a planetarium, researchers showed that beetles rolled straight under a starry sky but wandered aimlessly when the galaxy was switched off. It was the first animal known to navigate this way.