Tmesipteris oblanceolata, an unassuming fern about 15 centimeters long from Pacific islands, holds the record for the largest known genome: some 160 billion base pairs, versus about 3.1 billion for humans. Genome size has little to do with an organism's complexity: much of it is padded with repeated sequences.
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.