In flight, some dragonflies catch their prey in more than 90% of attempts, a success rate most lions could only dream of. Rather than chasing their target, they predict its path and fly toward the interception point, much like a guided missile. Their huge eyes, each made of tens of thousands of units, see almost all around them.
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.