Chinese female weightlifter Xiang Yanmei, who competes in the 69 kg weightclass, rests with a weight on her stomach as she checks her phone during a training session in preparation for the Rio Olympics at the Training Center of General Administration of Sports in China on July 20, 2016 in Beijing, China. Xiang Yanmei won the World Championships in 2013 and 2015. (Photo by Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)

A woman carries her child in a basket as she walks on a road in Allahabad, India, August 11, 2016. (Photo by Jitendra Prakash/Reuters)

Photographer Jim Zielinski from Florida, USA, captured this hilarious moment when a squirrel spied a tasty treat inside a novelty horse's head bird feeder in his back garden. (Photo by Jim Zielinski/Caters News)

In this photograph taken on January 19, 2012, Indonesian schoolchildren hold on to iron cables as they cross a nearly-collapsed suspension bridge at Sanghiang Tanjung village in Indonesia's Banten province to reach their school. (Photo by Kris Aria/AFP 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)

Buyan, a male Siberian brown bear, cools down under a stream of water sprayed by an employee in an enclosure on a hot summer day, at the Royev Ruchey zoo in Krasnoyarsk, Russia on June 14, 2019. (Photo by Ilya Naymushin/Reuters)

A girl covers her face as she is daubed in colours during the religious festival of Holi inside a temple in Nandgaon village, in the state of Uttar Pradesh, India, March 5, 2020. (Photo by Adnan Abidi/Reuters)

A dog wearing face mask is seen on a street as the country is hit by an outbreak of the novel coronavirus, in Shanghai, China on March 2, 2020. (Photo by Aly Song/Reuters)