A tree has no heart or muscles, yet it raises water all the way to its crown. The engine is the sun: water evaporating from leaf pores pulls continuous columns of water up behind it, held together by the attraction between molecules. The columns are under tension, like a rope being hauled. A large tree can move hundreds of liters a day this way.
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.