Flying
Aerodynamic wing surfaces, hollow skeletal structures, and powerful flight muscles generating sustained aerodynamic lift.
Andean Condor
The world's heaviest soaring bird: tracked condors flapped for just 1% of their flight time.
Atlantic Puffin
A bright-billed seabird that flies underwater on its wings and sometimes carries a dozen small fish home in its bill.
Bearded Vulture
One of the few vertebrates that lives mostly on bone, which it breaks open by dropping it from the sky and digests in a stomach whose pH could be below 1.
Common Raven
The oversized scavenger that caches food out of rivals' sight, guards the stash when it might be seen, and is less willing to pull its weight after a partner cheats.
Death's-Head Hawkmoth
A big night-flying moth that squeaks when alarmed and is known to raid beehives for honey with a short, sharp tongue.
Emperor Dragonfly
A big dragonfly whose larva fires a hooked mouthpart at prey, too fast for a water flea to escape.
European Crane Fly
A gangly fly whose leather-skinned grubs mostly hide underground by day and feed at night.
Fruit Fly
A 3-millimetre fly that lives on rotting fruit and has been central to major breakthroughs in genetics.
Giant Water Bug
A big water bug that stabs fish and tadpoles with its beak, and is drawn to lights.
Green Drake Mayfly
A burrowing mayfly that finds rivers by their polarized glint, and lands on smooth black plastic too.
Housefly
A fly that tastes with its feet, sips only liquids and is a mechanical vector of more than 100 diseases.
Human Botfly
A bumblebee lookalike that glues its eggs to a blood-feeding carrier, usually a mosquito or a tick, which delivers them when it feeds.
Hummingbird Hawk-Moth
A day-flying moth that hangs in front of flowers while a special patch of its eye fixes on the flower's entrance.
Luna Moth
A big green silk moth whose spinning hindwing tails pull bat attacks off its body, and whose adults do not eat.
Mallard
The wild ancestor of nearly all domestic ducks, and a hen that lays larger eggs after mating with a male she prefers.
Rock Dove
A cliff bird turned city bird, fed on "pigeon milk" as a chick, and in its trained homing form able to find its way back to the loft from far away.
Tsetse Fly
A blood-drinking fly that makes milk and gives birth to a larva nearly as big as she is.
Turkey Vulture
A scavenger with a real nose, and a habit of riding warm air.