White storks take increasingly quicker and more direct routes for their migrations as they get older, which suggests they learn by experience to perfect these paths. "We've been able to track these animals and gain detailed information on when and where they go," says Ellen Aikens at the University of Wyoming. "But we wanted to learn more about how migration is refined and developed over the stork's lifetime." White storks (Ciconia ciconia) mostly breed in Europe, but fly to central or southern Africa for the winter. Between 2013 and 2020, Aikens and her colleagues captured 258 juvenile white storks at five breeding sites in Germany and Austria.

If human societies are so complex, then how can we hope to understand them? Artificial Life gives us one answer. The field of Artificial Life comprises a diverse set of introspective studies that largely ask the same questions, albeit from many different perspectives: Why are we here? Who are we? Why do we behave as we do? Starting with the origins of life provides us with fascinating answers to some of these questions. However, some researchers choose to bring their studies closer to the present day. We are after all, human. It has been a few billion years since our ancestors were self-replicating molecules. Thus, more direct studies of ourselves and our human societies can reveal truths that may lead to practical knowledge. The papers in this special issue bring together scientists who choose to perform this kind of research.

The above video was provided by Intel. If you're a six-foot human standing on a paddleboard, it's just as well you don't know that a 60-foot, 40-ton humpback whale with 16-foot flippers is surfacing directly beneath you. The only thing more unsettling would be if there were four 60-ft., 40-ton humpback whales with 16-foot flippers doing the same. Just such a don't-look-down moment played out off the coast of the Hawaiian island of Kauai in 2016. Ordinarily, it would have been the kind of experience that the paddleboarder--who came through unharmed--would have described to his friends with a helpless "You should've seen it."

Rare drone footage has captured up to 800 whales frolicking and socialising in the endangered channel where they come to give birth. The beautiful belugas were filmed as they sought out the safety of Lancaster Sound which lies off the coast of Devon Island, in northern Canada. The mammals majestically swirl through estuaries to their temporary home, playing and socialising in groups with a vocal chirp that earned them the nickname'canaries of the sea'. They were filmed by Sea Legacy, who are campaigning to make Lancaster Sound into a marine protected area to save the surrounding, wondrous wildlife and environment. If successful it will prevent oil exploration, additional tanker traffic and development of the area.