The common cuckoo lays its eggs in other birds' nests, often matching the look of the host's eggs. Barely hatched and still blind, the chick shoves the other eggs or nestlings out of the nest one by one, balancing them on its back. It then mimics the begging calls of an entire brood, and its foster parents keep feeding it even when it dwarfs them.
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.