A spider's dragline silk is, for the same mass, several times stronger in tension than steel, and it can stretch considerably before snapping. The silk of Darwin's bark spider is among the toughest biological materials known, strong enough for webs that span entire rivers. Engineers have spent decades trying to mass-produce anything like it.
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.