The slime mold Physarum polycephalum is a single giant cell visible to the naked eye. Researchers placed oat flakes matching the positions of cities around a major metropolis, then let it spread. Within about a day, it wove a network of tubes between the food sources that rivaled the real rail system in efficiency and resilience.
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.