While many of us would pay good money for a spa mud bath, these fortunate hippos in South Luangwa National Park, Zambia, have nature to thank as they take a plunge in a lagoon in the second decade of February 2024. (Photo by Dimitar Nedelchev/Solent News)

A curious trio of owl monkeys peep out of a tree hollow on the Marañón River near the city of Nauta, Peru in April 2024. (Photo by James Cai/Solent News)

Lucy Blacker from Australia takes to the water at the 40 Foot for a Christmas Day Swim in Ireland on December 25, 2022. (Photo by Alan Betson/The Irish Times)

Storm chasing photographer Mike Hollingshead makes a living following the worst storms in America, from snarling tornadoes chewing up the Kansas farmland to supercell thunderstorms massing over the Dakotas. His style is to get right in the path of the storm. While he says it’s less scary than you think – because most of the storm consists of heavy rain – it’s still extremely stressful. Photo: Vivid sunset under severe storm in central Nebraska August 17, 2005. (Photo by Mike Hollingshead)

Belgian animal sculptor Emmanuel Janssens Casteels works at his desk next to a replica of a Smilodon, an extinct genus of machairodont felid, in his workshop in Prayssas December 3, 2014. Casteels' company OPHYS specializes in life-size reconstructions and the sculpting or moulding reproductions of animals and hyper-realist fossils. His reconstructions are exhibited in museums and theme parks. (Photo by Regis Duvignau/Reuters)

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)

In this Sunday, April 27, 2014 handout photo provided by Busch Gardens Tampa, mother armadillo Zowie, left, welcomes her newborn Southern three-banded armadillo baby at the Animal Ambassador Team, in Tampa, Fla. The baby was able to walk and roll into a ball within moments of its birth. Southern three-banded armadillos are the only species of armadillo that can fully roll up into a ball. (Photo by AP Photo/Busch Gardens Tampa)