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Arctic tern

A small Arctic tern stands on a snowy landscape, its white body contrasting with the icy terrain.

A small seabird (Sterna paradisaea) that breeds in the Arctic and winters around Antarctic pack ice, completing the longest annual migration of any animal on Earth. Geolocator tracking in 2010 revealed individual routes covering up to 80,000 kilometres a year along looping Atlantic paths that exploit prevailing winds. A tern with a thirty-year lifespan covers roughly 2.4 million kilometres — comparable to three round trips to the Moon.

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