Flowers are placed on actress Elizabeth Taylor's Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on March 23, 2011 in Hollywood, California. The Academy Award winning actress died Wednesday at age 79. (Photo by Charley Gallay/Getty Images)

In this September 17, 2010 file photo a little brown bat is photographed in La Crosse Wis. Researchers for the first time found that little brown bats appear to be showing resistance to white-nose syndrome, which has killed millions of bats across North America. (Photo by Peter Thomson/La Crosse Tribune via AP Photo)

Beautiful, strange and occasionally alarming pictures from the shortlist for this year’s Wellcome image awards – which celebrate the very best in science photography and imaging – from an x-ray of a bat to a micrograph of a kidney stone. The exhibition opens on 12 March at three science centres and the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester. Photo: Scanning electron micrograph (SEM) of an Arabidopsis thaliana flower, also commonly known as thale cress. Some of the anthers are open, revealing pollen grains ready for dispersal. Arabidopsis was the first plant to have its entire genome sequenced and is widely used as a model organism in molecular and plant biology. Horizontal width of image is 1200 microns. Magnification 100x. (Photo by Stefan Eberhard/Wellcome Images)

Some bats in the forested area of Guapiles, Costa Rica, 21 April 2020. (Photo by Jeffrey Arguedas/EPA/EFE)

Individuals and populations student winner. Limbing in the Tropics, photographed in Manaus, Brazil. While walking in the Amazon rainforest looking for bat roosts to set up mist nets to capture bats for scientific research, a faint and almost imperceptible noise suddenly caught this photographer’s attention. An anteater was climbing with exceptional ability in a tangled mess of branches and lianas. (Photo by Adrià López Baucells/University of Lisbon/British Ecological Society)

In this photograph taken on December 14, 2016, an Indian craftsman works on unfinished cricket bats in a factory in Meerut, some 70 kms north- east of New Delhi. (Photo by Dominique Faget/AFP Photo)

In this Tuesday, March 20, 2018 photo, a Vampire Bat drinks bovine blood in the Criaturas de la Noche (Creatures of the Night) Bat House, the Audubon Zoo's new night house in New Orleans. The various species are all from Central and South America, and the building's interior simulates an abandoned warehouse set up to protect Mayan artifacts during a dig. (Photo by Gerald Herbert/AP Photo)

This bat gives a cheeky smile as he gobbles down his food at Singapore Zoo, on September 10, 2013. (Photo by Benny Iskander/HotSpot Media)