In northeastern Brazil, some 200 million evenly spaced mounds of earth cover about 230,000 km², an area the size of Great Britain. They are spoil heaps left by termites digging a network of tunnels for millennia, and some mounds are nearly 4,000 years old. The excavated soil adds up to roughly 4,000 Great Pyramids of Giza.
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.