Runners compete in the women's 300-meter steeplechase finals during the U.S. Championships athletics meet in Eugene, Ore.,Saturday, August 2, 2025. (Photo by Ashley Landis/AP Photo)

It doesn’t make for the most flattering photoshoot, but there is a reason these zebras at Lewa wildlife conservancy in Kenya in the second decade of August 2025 are stood head to tail: they use their tails to swat flies from each others’ faces. (Photo by Andrew Campbell/Solent News & Photo Agency)

Four orphan barn owl chicks were found weak from hunger and thirst after their mother's death, are under treatment at the Dicle Wildlife Rescue and Rehabilitation Center before being released back into their natural habitat on September 23, 2025, in Diyarbakir, Turkiye. (Photo by Bestami Bodruk/Anadolu via Getty Images)

In more “raccoons are getting more like us” news, a drunk raccoon was found in a liquor store in Virginia, US in the first decade of December 2025. The animal had got into the shop via some loose ceiling tiles, knocked bottles of spirits off the shelves, lapped up the contents and passed out in the toilets. Once it had sobered up, it was released back into the wild – no doubt with a crashing hangover. (Photo by AP Photo)

A woman reacts as she attends Fet Gede, the traditional Haitian Day of the Dead celebration at the Port-au-Prince cemetery, in Haiti, on November 1, 2025. Fet Gede is the annual celebration when practitioners of vodou parade and believe to be possessed by the spirits of the dead. (Photo by Clarens Siffroy/AFP Photo)

A surfer walks by as starfish cling to a pillar of UC San Diego's Ellen Browning Scripps Memorial Pier in a negative tide during the King Tides which are the year's most extreme high and low tides on December 6, 2025 in San Diego, CA. (Photo by Kevin Carter/Getty Images)

Iraqi rapid response forces take a selfie picture outside a hospital damaged by clashes during a battle between Iraqi forces and Islamic State militants in the Wahda district of eastern Mosul, Iraq, January 8, 2017. (Photo by Alaa Al-Marjani/Reuters)

Afghan military and officials leave Kandahar city during fighting between the Taliban and Afghan security personnel, in Kandahar, southwest of Kabul, Afghanistan, Thursday, August 12, 2021. (Photo by Sidiqullah Khan/AP Photo)