From rural life in India to a chick growing inside its embryo and a sea turtle eating a purple jellyfish, the Society of Biology has released their stunning photography competition shortlist. Here: “Spectral Tarsier”. Tangkoko, Northern Sulawesi, Indonesia: Spectral tarsier by Wolfgang Weinhardt. (Photo and caption by Wolfgang Weinhardt/UK Society of Biology Photography Award 2014)

Most people know Nikon as a purveyor of pro and consumer-grade digital cameras. But the company's expertise with optics bleeds over into related markets – it's one of the science community's major suppliers of microscopes. And each year the company asks the community to send it some of their favorite images of tiny objects. A panel of scientists and journalists have chosen the best of this past year's submissions, which Nikon has placed on its Small World site.

Photo: Honorable Mention. “Snow crystal, illuminated with colored lights (5x)”. (Photo by Dr. Kenneth Libbrecht, California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Department of Physics, Pasadena, California, USA)

13-year-old Emmanuel Festo from Tanzania poses for a portrait with a plush toy that he says makes him feel safe at night and that he sleeps with, in New York's Staten Island, September 21, 2015. Albino body parts are highly valued in witchcraft and can fetch a high price. Superstition leads many to believe albino children are ghosts who bring bad luck. Some believe the limbs are more potent if the victims scream during amputation, according to a 2013 United Nations report. (Photo by Carlo Allegri/Reuters)

A cygnet keeps snug under its mother’s wing at Heronry Pond in Wanstead Park in east London in the last decade of May 2024. (Photo by Jeff Moore/The Times)

Young Haitian migrants hang out in the Batey La Lima community, an impoverished community surrounded by a massive sugarcane plantation in the coastal city of La Romana, Dominican Republic, Wednesday, November 17, 2021. As the rest of the world closes its doors to Haitian migrants, the country that shares an island with Haiti also is cracking down in a way that human rights activists say hasn’t been seen in decades. (Photo by Matias Delacroix/AP Photo)

A woman is cooled down with a watering can as she sunbathes using insulating tape, at a beauty center in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, on December 21, 2017. Brazilian women take advantage of the beginning of the summer to sunbathe using the new national trend: natural tanning with insulating tape. Instead of using tiny bikinis on the beach, women avoid being bothered or stalked by getting taped in the shape of them, and lay in the sun over rooftops to enjoy the morning sun and get the perfect “marquinha” tan lines. (Photo by Douglas Magno/AFP Photo)

A donkey savors warming temperatures after a long winter at the zoo in Warsaw, Poland, on Wednesday, April 8, 2015. (Photo by Czarek Sokolowski/AP Photo)

Statuettes in various forms of the lost-wax casting process are seen, including the wax figure, wax mold, shell mold, and patina coated statute of “The Actor” during a media event on the production of the statuettes for the 21th annual Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Awards at American Fine Arts Foundry in Burbank, California January 13, 2015. (Photo by Patrick T. Fallon/Reuters)