When a whale dies and sinks, its carcass becomes an oasis in the abyssal desert. Sleeper sharks and hagfish strip the flesh, then worms and crustaceans move in, and finally bacteria break down the fats inside the bones. Specialized Osedax worms, with no mouth or gut, bore into the skeleton to reach its nutrients. A single carcass can sustain hundreds of species for decades.
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.