When a frog swallows its prey, its eyes sink into its head. It's not just a reflex: the eyeballs drop through openings in the skull and help push food toward the throat. Experiments showed that when this movement is impaired, frogs need to swallow more times. That's why they seem to blink with every bite.
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.