Every autumn, millions of monarch butterflies travel up to about 4,000 km from Canada and the eastern United States to mountain forests in Mexico. These travelers belong to a 'super generation' that lives about eight months, versus a few weeks for their parents. The trip back north takes several generations, so no butterfly ever makes the journey twice.
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.