Kenichi Ito runs on his arms and legs on a race course on his way to setting the Guinness World Record fastest time for the 100-meter dash on all fours at Komazawa Olympic Park Stadium in Tokyo Thursday, November 14, 2013. The 30-year-old Japanese finished in 16.87 seconds Thursday, shaving more than half a second off his 2012 run of 17.47. (Photo by Shizuo Kambayashi/AP Photo)

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)

These Arab recruits line up in a barracks square in the British Mandate of Palestine, on December 28, 1940, for their first drill under a British solider. Some 6,000 Palestinian Arabs signed up with the British Army during the course of World War II. (AP Photo)

A housewife whose family lives in a shanty cooks beside a road in Manila, Philippines May 25, 2016. (Photo by Erik De Castro/Reuters)

An African giant pouched rat sniffs for traces of landmine explosives at APOPO's training facility in Morogoro on June 17, 2016. APOPO trains the rats to detect both tuberculosis and landmines at its facility. Every year landmines kill or maim thousands of people worldwide. The trained rats sniff for explosive and so are able to detect the presence of landmines far faster than conventional methods which involve metal detection. (Photo by Carl De Souza/AFP Photo)

An emu runs to escape an approaching wildfire as it burns near Potero, California, U.S. June 20, 2016. (Photo by Mike Blake/Reuters)

American actress Paris Jackson pulls faces at photographers during the “Melbourne Cup” race day festivities in Melbourne, Australia on November 7, 2017. (Photo by Media-Mode/Splash News and Pictures)

Giving out with a yell, Elke Sommer is tossed on the trampoline as she trains for her movie role as an athlete, on the playing field of the University of California at Los Angeles, June 8, 1967. (Photo by AP Photo)