The desert locust is usually a shy, solitary insect. But when crowds build up, repeated jostling against its hind legs triggers a surge of serotonin. Within hours, its behavior flips: it starts seeking out others, and its offspring change color and shape. Swarms of billions can then sweep across entire regions, devouring crops.
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.