Beautiful, strange and occasionally alarming pictures from the shortlist for this year’s Wellcome image awards – which celebrate the very best in science photography and imaging – from an x-ray of a bat to a micrograph of a kidney stone. The exhibition opens on 12 March at three science centres and the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester. Photo: Scanning electron micrograph (SEM) of an Arabidopsis thaliana flower, also commonly known as thale cress. Some of the anthers are open, revealing pollen grains ready for dispersal. Arabidopsis was the first plant to have its entire genome sequenced and is widely used as a model organism in molecular and plant biology. Horizontal width of image is 1200 microns. Magnification 100x. (Photo by Stefan Eberhard/Wellcome Images)

Starlings are seen at their nesting box in a private garden in the town of Bobruisk, Belarus, April 8, 2018. (Photo by Vasily Fedosenko/Reuters)

A giant panda named Kai Kai looks on as he opens a gift to celebrate his upcoming 14th birthday at the River Safari wildlife park in Singapore on September 10, 2021. (Photo by Roslan Rahman/AFP Photo)

Competitors Taisto Miettinen and Katja Kovanen fron Finland participate in the annual Wife Carrying World Championships in Sonkajarvi, Finland on July 6, 2019. People from all over the world took part in the event that was founded in 1992. (Photo by Mauri Ratilaine/EPA/EFE/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

An undated handout photo made available by the Zerynthia Association shows the pupa of an amicta moneiba, a recently discovered species of moth endemic to La Gomera and El Hierro islands in the Canary Islands, Spain (issued 01 July 2020), as those two islands pulled apart from the rest of the Canary Islands 2.5 million years ago. The Institute of Evolutionary Biology of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) and the Zerynthia Association have recently discovered two new moth species in El Hierro and La Gomera. (Photo by Yeray Monasterio/Zerynthia/EPA/EFE)

An orphaned giraffe nuzzling a wildlife keeper at Sarara camp in Kenya, one of 70 pictures being sold by Prints for Nature (printsfornature.com) to raise money for work by the Conservation International charity. This giraffe was rehabilitated and returned to the wild, as a number of others have done before him. Right now, giraffe are undergoing what has been referred to as a silent extinction. Current estimates are that giraffe populations across Africa have dropped 40 percent in three decades, plummeting from approximately 155,000 in the late 1980s to under 100,000 today. (Photo by Ami Vitale/National Geographic)

A stork starts from its nest in the cliffs high above the Atlantic Ocean in Cabo Sardao, Portugal, Friday, March 29, 2024. (Photo by Michael Probst/AP Photo)

A rose chafer in Oxfordshire, UK on July 8, 2024. The beetles are often seen on flowers in the garden and are sometimes maligned for munching their way through these plants. However, they are an important detritivore as they feed on dead and decaying matter and recycle its nutrients, which makes a helpful addition to any compost. (Photo by Geoffrey Swaine/Rex Features/Shutterstock)