A five-month-old female slender loris waits to be given her first health check by the veterinary team at London Zoo on July 21, 2011 in London, England. Two female baby slender lorises, who are yet to be named, were given health checks, their s*x determined and micro-chipped. Slender Loris is the common name for the strepsirrhine primates who are nocturnal and originate from India, Sri Lanka, and southeast Asia. London Zoo supports conservation of lorises in Sri Lanka, where populations are thought to be under threat from deforestation. (Photo by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)

People look at a dead pilot whale on a beach in Panadura on November 3, 2020. Rescuers and volunteers were racing since November 2 to save about 100 pilot whales stranded on Sri Lanka's western coast in the island nation's biggest-ever mass beaching. (Photo by Lakruwan Wanniarachchi/AFP Photo)

Yala national park, Sri Lanka. Category: Action. “The daylight was fading and I was scanning the bush for a leopard. Then, I saw this garden lizard and a common bronzeback snake in the road. When the snake struck, the lizard performed amazing acrobatics to avoid it. The snake didn’t enjoy the extra attention from the crowd of jeeps. The distraction gave the lizard the chance to live another day”. (Photo by Sajith Buddikha Withanage/National Geographic Traveller UK)

Rescue workers stand near dead bodies washed ashore in Ton Sai Bay in Thailand's Phi Phi island in this December 28, 2004 file photo. On December 26, 2004, a magnitude 9.15 quake off the coast of Indonesia's Aceh province triggered an Indian Ocean tsunami that killed around 226,000 people in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, Thailand and nine other countries. (Photo by Luis Enrique Ascui/Reuters)

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)

“Chameleons (family Chamaeleonidae) are a distinctive and highly specialized clade of lizards. They are distinguished by their parrot-like zygodactylous feet, their separately mobile and stereoscopic eyes, their very long, highly modified, and rapidly extrudable tongues, their swaying gait, the possession by many of a prehensile tail, crests or horns on their distinctively shaped heads, and the ability of some to change color. Uniquely adapted for climbing and visual hunting, the approximately 160 species of chameleon range from Africa, Madagascar, Spain and Portugal, across south Asia, to Sri Lanka, have been introduced to Hawaii, California and Florida, and are found in warm habitats that vary from rain forest to desert conditions”. – Wikipedia

Photo: A woman with the latest fashion accessory, a chameleon. (Photo by Fox Photos/Getty Images). Circa 1926

A Thai Buddhist monk performs a religious rite blessing elephants and mahouts to mark the National Elephant Day at the Ayutthaya Elephant Palace and Royal Kraal in the world heritage city of Ayutthaya, Thailand, 13 March 2025. The National Elephant Day has been observed annually on 13 March since 1998 when it was established by the Thai government, in an effort to protect and conserve Thai elephants, who are part of the Asian elephant family classified as an endangered species. (Photo by Rungroj Yongrit/EPA)

An Indian soldier from the international peace keeping force (IPKF) instructs young Sri Lankan recruits in shooting, part of the training given to the citizen's volunteer force in the North-Eastern Sri Lankan city of Batticaloa, September 28, 1989. (Photo by Barbara Walton/AP Photo)