By one classic estimate, light-sensing eyes evolved independently 40 to 65 times across the animal kingdom: insects' compound eyes, the nautilus's pinhole eyes, the lens eyes of octopuses and vertebrates... The octopus eye looks so much like yours it could be a copy, but it's better wired: its nerves run behind the retina, so it has no blind spot.
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.