Caecilians are legless amphibians that look like large earthworms. In some species, the mother grows a thick outer layer of skin packed with fat. Her young peel it off with special teeth and eat it, then the mother regrows it for the next meal. She comes to no harm: it is a truly unusual form of parental care.
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.