Behaviour: Mammals category. Giant Gathering by Tony Wu, USA. Dozens of sperm whales mingled noisily off Sri Lanka’s northeast coast, stacked as far down as Tony could see. This was a congregation of dozens of social units, like a gathering of the clans. Aggregations like this could be a critical part of the whales’ rich social lives but are rarely reported. Some two thirds of the population was wiped out before commercial whaling was banned in 1986. This kind of major gathering could be “a sign that populations are recovering”, says Tony. (Photo by Tony Wu/Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2017)

A mermaid poses under water during a shoot with photographer Brett Stanley during MerMagic Con at the Freedom Aquatic Center in Manassas, Virginia on August 7, 2021. MerMagic Con is advertised as the largest Mermaid convention in the world. Some parts of the convention are based on modeling and looks like the Miss Mermaid USA Pageant. The Society of Fat Mermaids looks to bring together plus size people and promote the idea that anyone can become a mermaid. Becoming a mermaid is not cheap, most merfolk spend thousands of dollars on their tail and outfit. Most tails are custom made out of silicone and others are foam and fabric. (Photo by Joseph Prezioso/AFP Photo)

A photo provided by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution shows Atlanta police officer T. R. Coxe removing painted material of a large swastika featuring a likeness of Republican presidential candidate, Donald Trump, along the northbound Buford Highway Connector just south of the Piedmont exit, in Atlanta, Georgia, USA, 09 December 2015. Just days after Donald Trump's call to ban Muslims from entering the United States, someone painted large swastikas featuring the Republican presidential candidate's face on at least two northeast Atlanta bridge supports. The symbol, which includes a cartoon of Trump sporting a Hitler-like mustache, was painted along the Buford Highway Connector. A second, similar image was found on a concrete bridge support on nearby Piedmont Road. Trump said in a statement released on 07 December that there should be a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States. (Photo by John Spink/EPA/AJC)

Shemika Charles limbos under her car at Niagara Falls State Park on May 28, 2015 in Buffalo, New York. A world record holding limbo queen thinks she has become the first person to shimmy under a car. Shemika Charles amazed herself and onlookers when she bent over backwards to get underneath the SUV earlier this week. The supple 22-year-old entered the record books in 2010 when she limboed down to an incredible eight and a half inches – the height of a beer bottle. She trains for up to four hours a day to keep her body in peak condition and now travels around America performing with her family. However, regular performances put an incredible strain on her body and she sees a chiropractor once a week to have her hips realigned. Her mother was also a successful limbo dancer in her home country of Trinidad and Tobago but had to give up due to injury. (Photo by Ruaridh Connellan/Barcroft USA)

A handout photo made available by the NASA shows the United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy rocket launches NASA's Parker Solar Probe to touch the Sun, from Launch Complex 37 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, USA, 12 August 2018. Parker Solar Probe is humanity’s first-ever mission into a part of the Sun’s atmosphere called the corona. Here it will directly explore solar processes that are key to understanding and forecasting space weather events that can impact life on Earth. (Photo by Bill Ingalls/EPA-EFE/NASA)

Now celebrating its 40th year, Nikon Small World is widely regarded as the leading forum to recognize proficiency and photographic excellence of photography taken under the microscope. To select the winners, competition judges analyzed entries from all over the world covering subjects ranging from chemical compounds to up-close-and-personal looks at biological specimens. The 2014 winners will be revealed on October 30th. In 2014, the competition received over 1,200 entries from more than 79 countries around the world. (Photo by Dr. Igor Robert Siwanowicz/Nikon Small World 2014)

“The Lovell Telescope is a radio telescope at Jodrell Bank Observatory, near Goostrey, Cheshire in the north-west of England. When it was constructed in 1955, the telescope was the largest steerable dish radio telescope in the world at 76.2 m (250 ft) in diameter; it is now the third largest, after the Green Bank telescope in West Virginia, USA, and the Effelsberg telescope in Germany. It was originally known as the 250 ft (76 m) telescope or the Radio Telescope at Jodrell Bank, before becoming the Mark I telescope around 1961 when future telescopes (the Mark II, III, and IV) were being discussed. It was renamed to the Lovell Telescope in 1987 after Bernard Lovell, and became a Grade I listed building in 1988. The telescope forms part of the MERLIN and European VLBI Network arrays of radio telescopes”. – Wikipedia

Photo: The Lovell Telescope listens to the night sky for radio signals from space at Jodrell Bank on June 22, 2011 in Holmes Chapel, England. Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics and it's world famous Lovell Telescope is on the shortlist of Britain's submission for Unesco World Heritage Site status. (Photo by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)

The winners of The London’s Natural History Museum's prestigious Wildlife Photographer of the Year for 2013 have finally been unveiled. Selected from almost 43,000 entries from 96 countries, the winners offer a glimpse of the stunning array of natural beauty on our planet. Photo: Canada: “Lucky pounce”. “Anticipating the pounce – that was the hardest part”, says Connor, who had come to Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, USA, in search of wildlife as much as the spectacular landscape. He had found this fox, his first ever, on his last day in the park. It was so absorbed in hunting that Connor had plenty of time to get out of the car and settle behind a rock. It quartered the grassland, back and forth, and then started staring intently at a patch of ground, giving Connor just enough warning of the action to come. When it sprung up, Connor got his shot. And when it landed, the fox got his mouse. (Photo by Connor Stefanison/Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2013)