It's a myth: every bat species has working eyes. Large fruit bats barely use echolocation at all and rely mostly on sight and smell. Even species that hunt by sonar can see, and some also detect ultraviolet light. With more than 1,400 species, bats make up roughly one in five mammal species on Earth.
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.