Butterflies have taste receptors on their legs. Before laying eggs, a female lands on a leaf and drums on it with her feet to release its sap, checking that it is a plant her caterpillars will be able to eat. Choose wrong and her offspring would starve, so tasting with her feet is a matter of survival.
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.