The gonality of a variety is defined as the minimal gonality of curve sitting in the variety. We prove that the gonality of a very general abelian variety of dimension $g$ goes to infinity with $g$. We use for this a (straightforward) generalization of a method due to Pirola that we will describe. The method also leads to a number of other applications concerning $0$-cycles modulo rational equivalence on very general abelian varieties.