Starling murmurations, clouds of thousands of birds rippling like a single body, have no leader. By reconstructing entire flocks in 3D, physicists found that each bird adjusts its flight to about six or seven neighbors, regardless of how far away they are. That simple rule is enough to sweep a change of direction across the whole flock in a flash.
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.