A Border Security Force (BSF) trooper performs a stunt on his motorcycle during a road show to celebrate 75 years of India's Independence, in Ahmedabad, India, August 25, 2021. (Photo by Amit Dave/Reuters)

Mott Sreymom, 34, a rat handler with the humanitarian demining organization APOPO, carries an African giant pouched rat back from a landmine field in Siem Reap, Cambodia, Tuesday, June 10, 2025. (Photo by Anton L. Delgado/AP Photo)

A fox cub with some bluebells in some woodland at Wye Valley near Gloucester, United Kingdom on April 29, 2023. (Photo by Thomas Winstone/Picture Exclusive)

Breath of an Arctic fox by Marco Gaiotti, Italy. Marco was watching this little Arctic fox as it incessantly called another nearby. Gradually he noticed the fox’s wet breath was quickly freezing in the air after each call. It was late winter in Spitsbergen, Svalbard, and the air was -35C (-31F). Photographing Arctic foxes is often frustrating, as they are normally running around fast in search of food, but this one was very relaxed and let Marco get close enough to focus on it, with the light glowing perfectly in the background. (Photo by Marco Gaiotti/Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2021)

A performer takes part in the opening of the Temple Fair, part of Chinese New Year celebrations at Ditan Park, also known as the Temple of Earth, in Beijing, February 18, 2015. (Photo by Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters)

An amazing series by Art Wolfe that were taken as part of his “Vanishing Act” in which the Seattle-based photographer shows the talent of animals in disguising themselves from predators. “This collection has been a long time in the making. Finding and filming animals on location is an exhilarating and painstaking process. I’m still adding to the project even now”. Have fun spotting the hidden animals.

Shortlisted: Pooyan Shadpoor, Houcheraghi. While walking along the shore of Larak, Iran – an island in the Persian Gulf – Shadpoor came across this luminous scene. The “magical lights of (the) plankton ... enchanted me so that I snapped the shot”, he writes. (Photo by Pooyan Shadpoor/2016 EPOTY)

A cygnet keeps snug under its mother’s wing at Heronry Pond in Wanstead Park in east London in the last decade of May 2024. (Photo by Jeff Moore/The Times)