The shoemaker in Turkey, the potato seller in Vietnam, and the weaver in Bolivia are among the billions of low-income entrepreneurs who make the world go round. They are also the type of people who can benefit significantly from microfinance. Every year, the Consultative Group To Assist The Poor (or CGAP) hosts a photo contest asking entrants to submit photos based around the idea of microfinance.The purpose of the contest is to give amateur and professional photographers a chance to show the different ways that poor households manage their financial lives and make their lives better through financial inclusion. Photo: South Asia Regional Winner – “Bricks Worker”, Bangladesh. A private enterprise worker is working at a brick field. These small businesses are creating new job opportunities for many poor people. (Photo by Moksumul Haque)

A dinosaur robot produced by Tyco Electronics Japan G.K. is controlled by a smartphone at CEATEC (Combined Exhibition of Advanced Technologies) Japan 2014 held at at Makuhari Messe in Chiba, east of Tokyo, Japan, 07 October 2014.With a Sharp Aquos ZETA mobile phone model, users can make the 6.5-meter (21 feet, 4 inches) long, 2.1-meter (6 feet, 11 inches) tall dinosaur robot to walk forward and backward, jump, move its head, hands and legs up and down, left and right, open and close its mouth by touching the screen panel and make it bark by shaking the handheld. (Photo by Kimimasa Mayama/EPA)

To most of us, hand-feeding crocodiles might sound like a one-way ticket to a watery grave. But for Jose Eduardo Chaves Salas, 32, coming within inches of the fearsome creatures’ razor-sharp teeth is all in a day’s work. He runs Jose's Crocodile River Tour on the Tarcoles River in Costa Rica, where tourists can watch him feed crocs up to 17 feet long. Photo: A tour guide shows a thumbs up as he sits on top of a crocodile on the Tarcoles river in Tarcoles, Costa Rica. (Photo and caption by Barcroft Media)

Some artists want to convey some deep message through their art, while some are simply satisfied with shocking the audience. Roderique Arisiaman is the latter kind. Though his works do not play on the strings of our emotion, they can pique the interest with their flashy and sometimes humorous appearance. Many of his works have a zombie theme, and are surprisingly well done, especially the one where a man pushes his fingers through his cheek and into his eye. If given the chance, Roderique Arisiaman would probably do a great job of designing a poster for some zombie apocalypse movie. (Photo and caption by Roderique Arisiaman)

“Cassowaries are large, flightless birds related to emus and (more distantly) to ostriches, rheas, and kiwis”, writes Olivia Judson in the September issue of National Geographic magazine. How large? People-size: Adult males stand well over five foot five and top 110 pounds. Females are even taller, and can weigh more than 160 pounds. Dangerous when roused, they’re shy and peaceable when left alone. But even birds this big and tough are prey to habitat loss. The dense New Guinea and Australia rain forests where they live have dwindled. Today cassowaries might number 1,500 to 2,000. And because they help shape those same forests – by moving seeds from one place to another – “if they vanish”, Judson writes, “the structure of the forest would gradually change” too. (Photo by Christian Ziegler/National Geographic)

“Microscope images forge an extraordinary bond between science and art, said Hidenao Tsuchiya, Olympus America's Vice President and General Manager for the Scientific Equipment Group. We founded this competition to focus on the fascinating stories coming out of today's life science research laboratories. The thousands of images that people have shared with the competition over the years reflect some of the most exciting work going on in research today – work that can help shed light on the living universe and ultimately save lives. We look at BioScapes and these beautiful images as sources of education and inspiration to us and the world”. – OlympusBioScapes

Photo: Pretarsus of the third leg of a female drone fly (Eristalis tenax), ventral view, by Dr. Jan Michels, Institute of Zoology, Christian-Albrechts-University of Kiel, Germany. (Photo by Olympus BioScapes)

Brazilian jaguars, imperilled by hunters, ranchers and destruction of their habitat, have learned to survive at least one menace – flooding in the Amazon. They take to the trees. Although they can be six feet long and 200 pounds, the largest South American cats nimbly navigate treetops where they stay from April to July when the rainforest floor is under meters-deep water. Here: A female adult jaguar, which has a cub, growls at the Mamiraua Sustainable Development Reserve in Uarini, Amazonas state, Brazil, June 5, 2017. (Photo by Bruno Kelly/Reuters)