Every night this marsupial leaves dozens of small cube-shaped droppings, often on rocks or logs to mark its territory, where cubes are less likely to roll away. Researchers cracked the mystery: the anus isn't square. Instead, the final stretch of intestine has stiffer and softer zones in its wall that sculpt the edges. The work earned its authors an Ig Nobel Prize.
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.