By radiocarbon-dating the lens of the eye, which forms before birth, researchers estimated the largest Greenland shark they studied to be about 390 years old, give or take more than a century. That makes it the longest-lived vertebrate known. This cold-water shark grows about a centimeter a year and may not reach sexual maturity until around 150.
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.