A thirsty timber wolf, Lithuania, 2018. (Photo by Erikas Plucas/Alamy Stock Photo)

A couple have taken their love of animals to the extreme – by opening up their home to over 100 rescued animals. Dr Prakash Amte and his wife, Dr. Mandakini Amte have dedicated their lives to helping both the animals – and people – of Hemalkasa, Maharashtra in India. Here: Prakash Amte is seen playing with a Hyena from his orphanage on September 19, 2017 in Maharashtra, India. (Photo by Haziq Qadri/Barcroft Media)

This watering hole is the social hub of the veldt; the scrubby grasslands that stretch across Namibia. The scorched earth supports sometimes fragile populations of magnificent wildlife – from endangered predators to plentiful herds of game. But these gentle giraffes and elephants need to be careful: lions don’t sleep at night, they hunt! The spectacular starscape above southern Africa is unchanged since explorers first mapped the continent. The photographer, Pietro Olivetta from Italy, said he had to be patient to capture these shots – but it was worth the wait. (Photo by Pietro Olivetta/Caters News)

A pine marten – one of a few wild mammals doing well in Britain (although they number just 3,700). A fifth of the country’s wild mammals are at high risk of extinction, research shows. (Photo by Maurice Flynn/The Mammal Society)

A hyena kisses his own reflection while appearing to walk on water. (Photo by Jake De Wet/Caters News Agency)

The secretive indri (Indri indri) of Madagascar, the largest living lemur. It is also critically endangered and highly evolutionarily distinct with no close relatives, which makes its branch one of most precarious on the mammal evolutionary tree. In the likely event that the indri goes extinct, we will lose 19m years of unique evolutionary history from the mammal tree of life. (Photo by Pierre-Yves Babelon/Aarhus University)

A brown bear cub by the Khailyulya River in north-east Kamchatka, Russia on July 24, 2021. (Photo by Yuri Smityuk/TASS)

A caiman in the Pantanal region of Brazil in 2021. They are used to seeing humans, allowing the photographer, Leighton Lum, a close-up shot. (Photo by Leighton Lum/Caters News Agency)