Michael Pankratz’s intriguing works focus specifically on the feet of tarantulas – an appendage that many have perhaps never focused on. The extreme close-ups of tarantulas’ “paws” show fine, colourful hairs, and sharp claws. Here: Brachypelma albopilosum, foot detail. (Photo by Michael Pankratz/Caters News Agency)

American actress and singer Bella Thorne attends the GQ Mexico Men of The Year Awards 2017 on October 26, 2017 in Mexico City, Mexico. (Photo by Victor Chavez/Getty Images)

Boeing B-29 (#10) from the 24th Bomb Squadron, 6th Bomb Group after an emergency landing at Iwo Jima on April 24,1945. (Photo by U.S. Air Force)

“Festive preparation”. Baghnapara, Bardhaman, West Bengal, India. Two girls prepare for the Gajan festival. They will perform a play based on Indian mythology. (Photo by Krishnasis Ghosh)

The Wildscreen festival is the world’s biggest celebration of screen-based natural history storytelling which takes place every two years in Bristol. Here: “Walrus in Midnight Sun”. Walrus feed mostly on bivalves in productive, shallow and often sandy habitats in the Arctic. This individual, though, arrived on a beach outside Tromsø, northern Norway, and found comfort on a stranded dead sperm whale. After two weeks he approached Audun, and only half a metre away he stretched his tusk forward and touched his hand gently. “This was one of the most memorable moments of my life”, Rikardsen says. He named the 500kg male Buddy. After two months, the dead whale was decomposed and Buddy suddenly disappeared. (Photo by Audun Rikardsen/Wildscreen 2016)

People and Nature category winner: Why did the sloth cross the road? by Andrew Whitworth (Osa Conservation and University of Glasgow), taken in Osa Peninsula, Costa Rica. “I was driving out from the Osa Peninsula, located on the southern Pacific coast of Costa Rica on a dark, stormy day. This female three-toed sloth (Bradypus variegatus) had luckily just about made it across the road, and the drivers of the Toyota on this occasion had spotted her in good time”. (Photo by Andrew Whitworth/2019 British Ecological Society Photography Competition)

A fuzzy caterpillar on a basil plant in west Bengal, India on December 25, 2023. The caterpillar’s defence system is its hair, which has microscopic barbs that break off easily in the skin of would-be predators. (Photo by Soumyabrata Roy/NurPhoto/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

A pool ingeniously filled with clear water in the middle of Lake Kerniki in Greece enabled this shot of feeding pelicans. (Photo by Bence Mate/Close Up Photographer of the Year 2020)