A blue-tailed bee-eater chases down its prey along the banks of the Kaveri River on the outskirts of the city of Mysore, India in the last decade of June 2025. (Photo by Nitin Jain/Solent News)

A starling jealously guards a seed station in the back garden of the photographer’s Michigan home in January 2024. (Photo by Lisa Cavanary/Solent News)

While many of us would pay good money for a spa mud bath, these fortunate hippos in South Luangwa National Park, Zambia, have nature to thank as they take a plunge in a lagoon in the second decade of February 2024. (Photo by Dimitar Nedelchev/Solent News)

A pelican on a lake in California in the first decade of January 2024 deftly snares a large trout after scooping it up, tossing it into the air and catching it in its bill. (Photo by Jiahong Zeng/Solent news)

A photographer has done her best to guess what her dog is daydreaming about – creating a series of fantasy adventures around her unaware pooch as he takes his daily naps. (Photo by Caters News)

Dai Shuqing's husband sits among adopted stray dogs at an animal shelter on December 15, 2006 in the outskirts of Xian of Shaanxi Province, China. The animal shelter, established by animal lover Dai Shuqing, is located at an abandoned warehouse which houses some 100 dogs and costs over 2,000 yuan (about US $255) per month. (Photo by China Photos/Getty Images)

The quokka the only member of the genus Setonix, is a small macropod about the size of a domestic cat. Like other marsupials in the macropod family (such as the kangaroos and wallabies), the quokka is herbivorous and mainly nocturnal.

Alfred the frog looks almost as scary as the pumpkin he is perched on at London Zoo 26 October 2011. Keepers at the zoo have joined in the Halloween tradition by supplying pumpkin lunches to some of their animals, including the giant waxy monkey frog. However Alfred is not quite the giant figure his species name suggests – he actually measures up at around 4 inches (10 centimeters). (Photo by EPA/Zoological Society of London)