A young Catholic waits for the start of mass at the church of Saint John the Baptist during the mud festival at Bibiclat, Nueva Ecija province, northern Philippines, Monday, June 24, 2024. (Photo by Aaron Favila/AP Photo)

Icelandic horses play in their paddock at a stud farm in Wehrheim near Frankfurt, Germany, as a mist rolls in on Thursday, August 5, 2021. (Photo by Michael Probst/AP Photo)

Wakodahatchee wetlands, Delray Beach, Florida, US. Equipped with sinewy necks and spear-like bills, great blue herons can lunge with fearsome speed to strike their aquatic prey. Adults will also employ rapid stabbing motions as one aspect of their complex courtship displays; they’re seemingly dangerous moves, but fitting to the intensity of mating season. (Photo by Melissa Rowell/Audubon Photography Awards)

Players in action during the Swamp Soccer Championships 2019 in Hyrynsalmi, Finland, 19 July 2019. The World Championship in swamp football is played annually on Vuorisuo bog in Hyrynsalmi. (Photo by Tomi Hanninen/EPA/EFE)

“Sniff out the Appenzell Cheese”. Alexander Hunter, 30, of Greenwich, Conn., took this photo in Appenzell, Switzerland, in September 2014. (Photo by Alexander Hunter)

Global wildlife populations will decline by 67% by 2020 unless urgent action is taken to reduce human impact on species and ecosystems, warns the biennial Living Planet Index report from WWF (World Wide Fund for Nature) and ZSL (Zoological Society of London). From elephants to eels, here are some of the wildlife populations most affected by human activity. Here: The maned wolf is among the large mammals in the Brazilian Cerrado that are threatened by the increasing conversion of grasslands into farmland for grazing and growing crops. (Photo by Ben Cranke/Nature Picture Library/Alamy Stock Photo)

The fourth annual BigPicture Natural World Photography Competition aims to celebrate the diversity of life on Earth, and encourages people to protect and conserve it. Here: “The Salmon Catchers”. Terrestrial Wildlife. To capture this view of a mother grizzly bear and her cub, photographer Peter Mather set up a camera trap on a log that he knew the bears tended to traverse while fishing for salmon, in the Yukon River watershed in Canada. (Photo by Peter Mather/BigPicture Natural World Photography Competition 2017)

Girls prepare to take part in a mermaid lesson in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil May 28, 2017. Women in Brazil are not unique in their affinity for mermaiding. Classes are held as far away as Texas and some folks wonder if mermaiding will be the next fitness craze. (Photo by Pilar Olivares/Reuters)