An octopus has around 500 million neurons, but only a minority sit in its brain. About two-thirds are spread through its eight arms, which can explore, taste and grab partly on their own. A severed arm can even keep reacting and grasping food for a while. It is a radically different way of building an intelligence.
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.