Participants wearing costumes and masks take part in the first day of the traditional carnival parade in Mohacs, Hungary, 23 February 2017. The carnival parade of so-called busos, dressed in costumes with frightening wooden masks and using various noisy wooden rattlers, is traditionally held on the seventh weekend before Easter to drive away winter. (Photo by Sandor Ujvari/EPA)

Riot security forces clash with demonstrators as a motorcycle is set on fire during a protest against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro's government in San Cristobal, Venezuela May 29, 2017. (Photo by Carlos Eduardo Ramirez/Reuters)

A paddler races in a giant pumpkin during the annual regatta on Lake Pisiquid in Windsor, Nova Scotia, Sunday, October 11, 2015. Participants hollow out the massive gourds and pilot them across the 500 meter course. (Photo by Andrew Vaughan/The Canadian Press via AP Photo)

A man dressed as Father Christmas learns how to use Zoom on a laptop in the grotto at Bamburgh castle in Northumberland, UK on November 3, 2020, it was due to open on November the 21st but due to the new national lockdown he will now be speaking to the children via Zoom on a computer. (Photo by Owen Humphreys/PA Images via Getty Images)

A ten-week-old North China leopard (Panthera pardus japonensis) is handled during a routine health check in the Zoo of Debrecen, northeastern Hungary, 30 January 2024. The female cub, which was born on 21 November 2023, belongs to a leopard subspecies that is endemic to the forest habitats of Northern China. (Photo by Zsolt Czegledi/EPA/EFE)

A) 1st place WINNER – Roy Rimmer. “This rat was in an outdoor set I made, the set up is two meters long and a meter wide made of Perspex,it has a plywood front with holes cut in for my camera and flash guns, I placed two rusty paint cans in the set up and the rat would leap from one can too the other, I had to use flash to freeze the action”.

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)

This picture taken on May 21, 2016 shows professional wrestlers fighting each other during the Wrestling City Asia organized by Singapore Pro Wrestling at a stadium in Kuala Lumpur. Kenneth Thexeira is a mild-mannered writer for an interior-design magazine by day, but on certain nights his alter ego bursts forth in golden tights and a baby-blue cape: enter “The Eurasian Dragon”. (Photo by Mohd Rasfan/AFP Photo)