Watching the animal kingdom can often be a humbling experience for humans. Even as we marvel at the animals thriving in the cold Tundra winters, our attention is drawn to tardigrades, which can live in unbelievably cold and hot temperatures alike. We are told that in 1882 an African hunter struck a stork with a wooden arrow, but the bird managed to fly away and arrived at its home in Germany — thousands of kilometres away — with the arrow still stuck in its neck. The pfeilstorch, or arrow stork, remains a legend in Germany till today.
But here is something that would leave all these amazing examples miles behind. Last year, AP news agency reported that a young bar-tailed godwit bird, which had been attached with a GPS tracker chip powered by a tiny solar panel, flew 13,560 km non-stop from Alaska to the Australian state of Tasmania over 11 days.
Quoting data from Germany’s Max Plank Institute for Ornithology, AP said the five-month-old bird did not fly in a straight line; instead, it started on a south-western course towards Japan, turned south-east, then flew over Kiribati, New Caledonia and past the Australian mainland before turning west towards Tasmania. The little bird took wing on October 13 and touched down in Tasmania on October 24, without stopping for food or rest.