If you weighed all life on Earth in carbon, plants would win by a landslide: about 450 billion tonnes out of 550, more than 80%. Bacteria come next at around 13%. Animals account for only about 0.4% of the total, and humans barely 0.01%. On a planetary scale, life is overwhelmingly green.
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.