A dramatic rise in owning exotic pets in China is fuelling global demand for threatened species. The growing trade in alligators, snakes, monkeys, crocodiles and spiders is directly linked to species loss in some of the world’s most threatened ecosystems. Here: A fennec fox (Vulpes zerda) is groomed in a pet store in central Beijing. Native to the Sahara in North Africa, the species became a popular pet after being depicted as a character in Disney’s 2016 animated movie Zootopia. Individuals can cost between $2,000–$3,000. (Photo by Sean Gallagher/The Guardian)

A photographer could bear-ly believe his eyes when a bear started waving at him. The friendly animal wandered to the front of his enclosure before sitting back in full view of zoo guests. He then lifts his powerful paw and excitedly waves in an almost human-like way at his new audience. The hilarious encounter was captured by keen photographer Andrey Slepnev, 31, while on a trip to Madrid Zoo, Spain on March 24, 2016. (Photo by Andrey Slepnev/Caters News)

These portraits reveal the incredibly humanlike expressions of a variety of apes.Through piercing eyes and finite facial details, the intimate photographs show the animals looking angry, sad, delighted and pensive. They are the works of Manuela Kulpa – an IT consultant and keen photographer from near Cologne, Germany – who shot the apes predominantly at zoos across Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Germany and the Netherlands. Here: Bonobo, Azibo. (Photo by Manuela Kulpa/Caters News)

In this July 5, 2016 photo, a tamed elephant rests in a pool of water by a road in Baduraliya, a village outside Colombo, Sri Lanka. Even as the country cracks down on illegal ownership, the enduring demand for elephants has the government planning to set up its own pool of captive animals to be hired out to temples for ceremonies and maintained with budget funds. (Photo by Eranga Jayawardena/AP Photo)

In this Wednesday, December 2, 2015 photo, Dr. Gal Kelmer, head of the department of large animals, unties a horse after its operation at the University's Koret School of Veterinary Medicine in Rishon Lezion, Israel. “Horses have an instinctive response of flight from danger”, Kelmer said. “The minute they wake up they start trying to stand and run, even if they don't have control of their limbs. So then they fall”. (Photo by Oded Balilty/AP Photo)

Animal rights activists protest in front of the Toennies meatpacking plant and slaughterhouse in Rheda-Wiedenbrueck, Germany, Saturday, June 20, 2020. Hundreds of new coronavirus cases are linked to the large meatpacking plant, officials ordered the closure of the slaughterhouse, as well as isolation and tests for everyone else who had worked at the Toennies site – putting about 7,000 people under quarantiner. (Photo by Friso Gentsch/dpa via AP Photo)

Hundreds of people from a range of NGOs and campaign groups protest to demand the immediate restoration of nature at DEFRA – Department for Environment Food & Rural Affairs on September 28, 2023 in London, England. The 2023 State of Nature Report revealed that approximately one in six species in Great Britain, including turtle doves and hazel dormice, are at risk of extinction, citing climate change, intensive farming, and pollution as major threats, with a 19% average decline in monitored plant and animal populations since 1970. (Photo by Guy Smallman/Getty Images)

Brazilian jaguars, imperilled by hunters, ranchers and destruction of their habitat, have learned to survive at least one menace – flooding in the Amazon. They take to the trees. Although they can be six feet long and 200 pounds, the largest South American cats nimbly navigate treetops where they stay from April to July when the rainforest floor is under meters-deep water. Here: A female adult jaguar, which has a cub, growls at the Mamiraua Sustainable Development Reserve in Uarini, Amazonas state, Brazil, June 5, 2017. (Photo by Bruno Kelly/Reuters)