The gastric-brooding frog swallowed its fertilized eggs. For about six weeks, its stomach stopped producing acid and became a nursery, and the mother stopped eating. She then brought up fully formed froglets through her mouth. Discovered in the 1970s, the species vanished in the 1980s, before scientists could unravel all its secrets.
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.