A woman plays with a kitten inside of a line house in downtown Shanghai April 12, 2015. (Photo by Carlos Barria/Reuters)

Beautiful, strange and occasionally alarming pictures from the shortlist for this year’s Wellcome image awards – which celebrate the very best in science photography and imaging – from an x-ray of a bat to a micrograph of a kidney stone. The exhibition opens on 12 March at three science centres and the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester. Photo: Scanning electron micrograph (SEM) of an Arabidopsis thaliana flower, also commonly known as thale cress. Some of the anthers are open, revealing pollen grains ready for dispersal. Arabidopsis was the first plant to have its entire genome sequenced and is widely used as a model organism in molecular and plant biology. Horizontal width of image is 1200 microns. Magnification 100x. (Photo by Stefan Eberhard/Wellcome Images)

Eva Longoria Farmer Visits "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon" at Rockefeller Center on November 24, 2015 in New York City. (Photo by Theo Wargo/NBC/Getty Images for "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon")

In this 2017 photo provided by Simon Pierce, Jonathan Green checks on a fin-mounted satellite tag on a whale shark in the Galapagos Islands area of Ecuador. Despite typically being bigger than a double-decker bus, the elusive whale shark has only tiny, almost useless teeth. It's also one of the least understood animals in the ocean. (Photo by Simonjpierce.com via AP Photo)

An Egyptian man shows off his motorcycle skills, following the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in Cairo, Egypt on July 17, 2020. (Photo by Mohamed Abd El Ghany/Reuters)

Paint-splattered revellers take a break at the Notting Hill carnival in West London in the last decade of August 2022. (Photo by Andy Hall/The Observer)

Early morning swimmers at Cullercoats Bay on the north east coast of England on Sunday, December 29, 2024. (Photo by Owen Humphreys/PA Images via Getty Images)

A man gestures during a demonstration over police killings of people protesting against the imposition of tax hikes by the government, in Nairobi, Kenya on July 2, 2024. (Photo by Monicah Mwangi/Reuters)