Cuvier's beaked whale holds the diving records for mammals. Tags have logged a descent to nearly 3,000 meters and a breath-hold of 222 minutes. To manage it, the whale stores oxygen in its myoglobin-rich muscles, slows its heart and cuts blood flow to non-essential organs. Scientists still can't fully explain such feats.
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.