Alpacas of Lisa Vella-Gatt (not pictured) graze at her farm near Benfeita, Portugal May 11, 2015. Lisa came to Portugal from England in 2009 to set up Monte Frio Alpacas, a project where she breeds alpacas, which produce wool. Lisa's 14 alpacas produce about 50 kilos (110 pounds) of wool annually. (Photo by Rafael Marchante/Reuters)

Commended. In late May, about a quarter of a million snow geese arrive from North America to nest on Wrangel Island, in northeastern Russia. They form the world's largest breeding colony of snow geese. Photographer Sergey Gorshkov spent two months on the remote island photographing the unfolding dramas. Arctic foxes take advantage of the abundance of eggs, caching surplus eggs for leaner times. But a goose (here the gander) is easily a match for a fox, which must rely on speed and guile to steal eggs. “The battles were fairly equal”, notes Sergey, “and I only saw a fox succeed in grabbing an egg on a couple of occasions, despite many attempts”. Surprisingly, “the geese lacked any sense of community spirit”, he adds, “and never reacted when a fox harassed a neighboring pair nesting close by”. (Photo by Sergey Gorshkov/Veolia Environnement Wildlife Photographer)

Van cats, relatively large, have a chalky white coat, sometimes with ruddy coloration on the head and hindquarters, and have blue or amber eyes or have heterochromia, are seen at “Cat Villa”, established to protect the cats in Van, Turkey on January 20, 2021. Internationally valid “health certificate” is prepared for Van cats, visited by local and foreign tourists, within a project to protect their generations and increasing their numbers. Health certificates with information such as name, breed, gender, eye color, date of birth, tail feature, color, hearing status and identity are given to people who want to adopt cats. (Photo by Mesut Varol/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

Bristol Zoo's baby gorilla Kukena holds onto his mother's arm as he ventures out of his enclosure at Bristol Zoo's Gorilla Island on May 4, 2012 in Bristol, England. The seven-month-old western lowland gorilla is starting to find his feet as he learns to walk having been born at the zoo in September. Kukena joins a family of gorillas at the zoo that are part of an international conservation breeding programme for the western lowland gorilla, which is a critically endangered species. (Photo by Matt Cardy)

A Dartmoor Hill pony foal runs on the moor on Dartmoor on May 17, 2011 in Princetown England. Although a tourist attraction, especially during the foaling season and often seen as part of the landscape of Dartmoor, many ponies face an uncertain future due to unsustainable breeding and their falling market values. The charity South West Equine Protection estimates that last year 1500 ponies were slaughtered – with many being sold for lion meat to nearby zoos. Along with other equine charities, they are calling for the removal of stallions from the moor to bring numbers down to sustainable levels. (Photo by Matt Cardy/Getty Images)

A park worker holds a monitor lizard at Lumpini park in Bangkok, Thailand, September 20, 2016. More than 400 of the Monitor lizards in the park will be caught by Thai authorities to relocate the reptile to a wildlife breeding center in the effort to control the creature population in the public park after the monitor lizard disturbing and causing several minor accident of people who jogging and cycling at the Lumpini Park. (Photo by Athit Perawongmetha/Reuters)

With the humpback calving season drawing to a close, here’s a look at some of Rita Kluge’s distinctive marine photos from the south Pacific. The Sydney-based photographer fell in love with whales after witnessing southern rights from the New South Wales coastline as they travelled to and from their feeding grounds in the Antarctic. She has since been to Tonga, where humpbacks breed and calf in winter months, to photograph them in the water. (Photo by Rita Kluge/The Guardian)

A woman holds a hedgehog at the Harry hedgehog cafe in Tokyo, Japan, April 5, 2016. In a new animal-themed cafe, 20 to 30 hedgehogs of different breeds scrabble and snooze in glass tanks in Tokyo's Roppongi entertainment district. Customers have been queuing to play with the prickly mammals, which have long been sold in Japan as pets. The cafe's name Harry alludes to the Japanese word for hedgehog, harinezumi. (Photo by Thomas Peter/Reuters)