Birds belong to the theropods, the two-legged dinosaurs that also included Tyrannosaurus and Velociraptor. Hundreds of feathered dinosaur fossils have made the case. When the asteroid struck 66 million years ago, only this lineage of dinosaurs survived. The pigeon on your balcony is, strictly speaking, a living dinosaur.
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.