Look up in certain forests and you'll see the canopy cut like a jigsaw puzzle, each crown separated from its neighbors by a narrow channel of sky. The phenomenon has a lovely name: crown shyness. Its cause is still debated, from branches abrading each other in the wind to light sensing or limiting the spread of pests.
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.