Macaques huddle together for warmth at a hot spring in Nagano, Japan in the last decade of December 2023. Known as snow monkeys, the animals soak in the 40°C water every day during cold weather, spending their bathtime grooming, snoozing and playing on visitors’ camera tripods. (Photo by David Lazar/Animal News Agency)

People caress a horse during the traditional “El Tope” end-of-year parade in San Jose on December 26, 2023. Cowboy hats and boots, in the purest “wild west” style, flooded the streets of downtown San José to proudly display the horse culture in Costa Rica. (Photo by Ezequiel Becerra/AFP Photo)

Hot-air balloons glide over the historical Cappadocia region with Turkish flags to mark August 30 Turkiye's Victory Day in Nevsehir, Turkiye on August 30, 2023. (Photo by Behcet Alkan/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

Iranian school girls show their hands with pro-government slogans and an anti-Israeli slogan which reads in Farsi: “Death to Israel”, during a rally in front of the former U.S. Embassy in Tehran, Iran, marking 44th anniversary of the seizure of the embassy by militant Iranian students, Saturday, November 4, 2023. (Photo by Vahid Salemi/AP Photo)

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)

Lightning strikes as smoke billows following an Israeli airstrike in Gaza City on October 9, 2023. The death toll from the unprecedented assault by Palestinian militant group Hamas on its territory rose to 900 in Israel, which has retaliated with a withering barrage of strikes on Gaza, raising the death toll there to 687. (Photo by Mohammed Abed/AFP Photo)

Among the fish populations that could be harmed by the Xayaburi dam in Laos is the critically endangered Mekong giant catfish, considered by the Guinness Book of World Records to be the world’s largest freshwater fish. The fish, which grows to 650 pounds and about 10 feet long, is only found in the Mekong River. It is migratory, moving between downstream habitats in Cambodia upstream to northern Thailand and Laos each year to spawn. Some experts fear the Xayaburi dam could block the migration and drive the giant catfish to extinction. (Photo by Courtesy of Zeb Hogan/University of Nevada, Reno)

“The Daleks are a fictional extraterrestrial race of genetically manipulated mutants from the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. Various storylines portray them as having had every emotion removed except hate, leaving them with a desire to purge the Universe of all non-Dalek life. Collectively they are the greatest enemies of the series' protagonist, the Time Lord known as the Doctor. Their famous catchphrase is “Exterminate!”, with each syllable individually synthesised in a frantic electronic voice” – Wikipedia

Photo: Max Hardy, aged 6, stands by a street sign from the Doctor Who Experience as Dalek, from the cult television show Doctor Who watches him on April 16, 2011 in London, England. The Doctor Who Experience Exhibition is currently running at Kensington Olympia Two, celebrating the science fiction programme that was originally screened in 1963. (Photo by Matthew Lloyd/Getty Images for BBC Worldwide)