Below the sunlit layer, a constant shower of whitish flakes drifts down into the abyss: clumps of dead plankton, algae, mucus and fecal pellets. Scientists call it 'marine snow'. Some flakes take weeks to reach the seafloor, where they feed much of the deep-sea fauna. Along the way, this snowfall locks carbon away in sediments for thousands of years.
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.