Spread around the world by humans, the Argentine ant forms vast networks of nests that cooperate instead of fighting. In Europe, one such supercolony stretches along some 6,000 km of coastline. Even more striking, workers from Europe, California and Japan, when brought together, treat each other as allies, effectively forming a single global colony.
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.