A Cossack slashes a watermelon with a sabre during a sabre-cutting competition in the village of Novosvetlovsky, Rostov region, on August 27, 2023. (Photo by AFP Photo/Stringer)

Mother and son in disguise attend a Halloween celebration at Taipei Children's Amusement Park in Taipei, Taiwan, Sunday, October 29, 2023. (Photo by Chiang Ying-ying/AP Photo)

A Germany fan looks dejected after the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 Group E match between Costa Rica and Germany at Al Bayt Stadium on December 1, 2022 in Al Khor, Qatar. (Photo by Wolfgang Rattay/Reuters)

“Cassowaries are large, flightless birds related to emus and (more distantly) to ostriches, rheas, and kiwis”, writes Olivia Judson in the September issue of National Geographic magazine. How large? People-size: Adult males stand well over five foot five and top 110 pounds. Females are even taller, and can weigh more than 160 pounds. Dangerous when roused, they’re shy and peaceable when left alone. But even birds this big and tough are prey to habitat loss. The dense New Guinea and Australia rain forests where they live have dwindled. Today cassowaries might number 1,500 to 2,000. And because they help shape those same forests – by moving seeds from one place to another – “if they vanish”, Judson writes, “the structure of the forest would gradually change” too. (Photo by Christian Ziegler/National Geographic)

“We take rusty old junk and we put love into it”. The old Motor City has a unique style in bicycles these days: from fat wheels and fake fuel tanks to stretched cycles with powerful sound systems – and even a family-sized BBQ. “Detroit’s custom bike scene developed alongside Slow Roll, a weekly cycle ride started in 2010 by Jason Hall and Mike MacKool. Now upwards of 2,000 people turn up each Monday to cruise a different part of the city. The week I go the crowd seems evenly split between black and white, male and female, city and suburbs. It’s the most inclusive cycle event I’ve ever witnessed”. (Photo by Jason Walker/Slow Roll Monday Nights)

Japanese artist Mami Kiyoshi has spent 15 years creating vivid portraits of people surrounded by their belongings – from wine bottles and violins to the odd stray pet. Mami Kiyoshi’s ongoing series “New Reading Portraits” is, in part, a nod to the mise-en-scène found in traditional woodcut printing. Here: Sakura and Kazuhiro, Tokyo, 2015. (Photo by Mami Kiyoshi/Galerie Annie Gabrielli/The Guardian)

A member of a local swimming club holds a Russian national flag as he dives in at the start of a 24-hour swimming marathon near the western Siberian city of Barnaul March 29, 2014. Thirty members of the club will swim in turn during the event, held to mark Crimea becoming part of Russia, local media reported. (Photo by Andrei Kasprishin/Reuters)

A resident looks into a newly-built giant trash can, partially buried underground, next to a street in Taiyuan, Shanxi province November 6, 2014. The trash can, which has a diameter of 1.9 meters and a depth of 2.8 meters, could contain approximately 10 cubic metres of garbage. It was built to replace an open-air garbage dump site, local media reported. (Photo by Reuters/Stringer)